Ron Conners: Life on the Edge
by Mulletmanalive
Summary: AU: diverges at So the Drama. Ron leads a strange and desperate rebellion against Drakken and a truly insane Shego some time after Kim's death. Nonlinear storytelling.
1. Master

Disclaimer: Kim Possible and all characters associated with the franchise are the property of Disney and whatever company was the creative drive behind their creation. The characters are used here under the tribute aspect of copyright law, as explained sketchily by a law student I spent time with on a train.

Ownership of the characters is not mine and I draw no profit from their use.

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Where they occur, the characters of Hsien [Immortal/Transcendent/Beyonder, Arahat, Prophet, Saint, Pagan, Dreamer, Watcher and Shaman are my own, here as a cross over to my 'Living Saint' series of stories, which will make it into text at some point.

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Before we begin, you must be aware that this story is told in non-linear style. I make no apologies for this and if you aren't confused by the order of events them I'm probably not being true to the original intention.

Due to this and the need to keep things at least a little clear for myself and others, this first section includes the introduction to the series and a timeline that will be added to as events unravel. It will include the times listed like in StarWars, in terms of AK [after Kim and will list all the events in the order that they occur by chapter number. The events are listed as bullet points so don't read this unless you're up for spoilers before you've even started.

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Oy AK – So the Drama. Kim and Ron attempt to rescue Nakasumi-San in Tokyo from Shego and a group of ninja. They fail. Kim dies. (1)

5 days – Kim's funeral. Anne descends into denial. James blames Ron for this. (4, 27)

1y AK – Ron enters training in Yamanuchi and later Tibet after an attack on the school. Learns advanced techniques. (12, 15, 18, 24, 28)

2y AK – Ron travels to Tokyo to meet Yori and reclaim the Lotus Blade (16) He is forced to kill his enemy to save Yori (20)

3y AK – Ron begins to found a rebellious movement in Middleton, helped by allies and geography with the aid of Wade and the Twins (26, 41). Ron and Bonnie begin a physical relationship. Ron is forced to overcome her insecurities (10)

4y AK – Ron visits the Senior's island to attempt to gain funding. He uncovers and confronts a demonic scheme (30, 32, 43, 50)

5y AK – Ron is captured by Drakken's forces (13) and interrogated by Shego (8, 57), he is placed in a fantasy where he is in college (9, 11, 14, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 29, 33, 35). He endures time as the Batman like lone hero Ronin (31, 34, 39, 46). He lives as a policeman married to Tara (52, 53, 55, 60, 65)Ron returns to the Rebellion to discover all is not as he left it (57, 64, 40, 42, 49, 48, 62, 54, 56, 59, 62)

6y AK – Ron is hit by airshell, losing eye. Gains replacement (6). Ron is called upon to aid the Paragons in defusing a situation in Cambodia. He is confronted by a demon purposefully summoned to destroy him. He realises much and is happy for a time (36). The villain from Cambodia re-emerges and takes Ron prisoner, revealing dark secrets (37, 47, 67)

7y AK – Ron and Monty fight as Monkey Fist re-emerges from the other man's madness. Ron defeats Monty, leaving him for dead (44).

8y AK – Ron and the rebels move to China to try to save refugees from Drakken's purges (58). Ron and the main body of the Rebels assist the British resistance under Baxter release a silicon oxidising virus and help make Britain a haven for the escaped (61, 45, 66).

10y AK – Ron plans and leads an abortive recce mission. One new recruit is killed (2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 22, 27, 38, 51). Damien eventually supersedes Ron as the leader of the resistance (63). Ron is confronted by a pair of uncomfortable truths about his family (68, 69).


	2. Chapter 1

Some stories write themselves. Unfortunately for me, all the books that I would care to read burned a long time ago. Most of the joy in my life did. I feel the same moments of humiliation and distress again, the same as a thousand other nights, the heat of the fire that carried me into the sky. The scent of the night hangs still, of burning rope and jet fuel and the screams of a thousand Japanese children, all there to see a toymaker, all forced to watch what happened.

My last few moments are the same as always, feeling that gloved hand slip through my fingers, watching those green eyes fill with determination. The last futile gesture with the empty grapnel, the green turning to fear. I call out, helpless, as if I could arrest her fall and see that last sad little look in her eyes as the world explodes around me.


	3. Chapter 2

I'm sitting bolt upright in bed.

_It was just a dream_, I tell myself, hoping that one day that will be true. I'll wake up and there will be some chance of seeing one shred on that red hair without it being worn by a distraught someone I know. Only two people have that hair and it chokes me up.

I listen carefully, but there isn't much to be heard, just some shallow breathing next to me, a faint thumping noise about thirty, um four feet to my two and that same old rattle.

The breathing is a woman I have known for a long time. I don't believe that she cares much for me and I'm not sure if I feel anything for her. I know once there was that crazy Stockholm syndrome type attraction between us, the sort that you only develop in work or school. Now, I'm pretty sure that we use each other for comfort and warmth as much as anything. Glancing over those sleek lines and that blemishless skin in the harsh grey shaft that cuts in from the gym locker slits in the doorway, I question for the umpteenth time how she still looks good in these times.

I know she isn't sleeping with anyone else though, that's the troubling thing.

The thumping noise is a pair of runaways from the inner-cities. They must be relishing the freedom right now. Ha, I can almost remember what that felt like. Crazy kids. A few days more of hiding in holes and stealing from those with nothing worth stealing to survive and that'll be gone. Hope they enjoy the rush whiles they've got it.

The rattle is the idle on the air ventilation system. That means that we've gone into the second sweep. The devils are on the prowl. In all the years we've been hiding out here, I don't think anyone's actually been caught by that sweep.

I can't really see any point in staying put so I lever my tired bones from the luxurious packing crates we managed to score to make the beds and swing my feet over the edge. I must've made some noise because I hear a little voice behind me:

"Same dream again, Honey? Isn't there some kind of, like, shrink here you could talk to?"

"It's nothing. Just go back to sleep. You have first watch and a squad of freshmen to play with in less than three hours," I replied and instantly felt like I was being too harsh on her.

"I wish you wouldn't call them that. You make me feel like I'm still at school."

"If we're still at school, what're you doing with me, Bonnie?"

"You'd think that after nearly nine months of hiding in this complex, I'd be used to wearing shoes."

I didn't expect sympathy and that wasn't my intention. I didn't get a laugh either but coming from Wade these days, that grunt was like a standing ovation. Somehow, he was playing weights with a pair of steel fuel cans, dragging them up like barbells without a single little sound. Never worked out how he did it. Don't think I've seen the guy sleep since her death. Used to laugh at him on the little screen in his 'jamies when we called from Europe. Not seen that in far, far too long.

"Any news while I've been gone?" I ask, praying for a reason to put down the thick caffeinated mud that I'd poured from the stand as I came in. I'd have settled for a reason to go back to my room and wake Bonnie up by putting on my boots, stop the grills that passed for a floor here from cutting into my feet.

"Nothing," he growled back in tones that could have been felt through concrete. I remember years ago, seeing a film with this huge black guy in it, something something Duncan, I think his name was. These days there was more of a resemblance than just a voice. Wade's shaved dome and broad nose made him the spiting image. I know it's a lot to do with how Lontaine looked but that doesn't change anything.

"Guess I'll go walk the rounds," I mumble finally. He's definitely becoming more difficult to talk to these last few months. Might be this place or just who we've lost recently. Today, I didn't even get my usual, "You do that."

Four AM in a God-forsaken tunnel complex under an abandoned mall that had been converted from a steelworks. If you'd asked me before the junior prom where I'd be in ten years time, I can guarantee that I would never have thought of this. Not me, not Ron Stoppable. I would have said that I'd still be helping Kim save the world, or married to some nice Jewish girl that my mother found for me or even Kim if she hadn't found anyone better.

I think I just sighed. Not a big one, but I'm pretty sure that I just sighed. I don't know what it is about that intersection. Maybe it has it in for me. Must be the fact that I start thinking about Kim by that time in every one of these long walks. I wonder what she'd think of this Ron Stoppable; I'm certainly not the same boy with a bouncy ball that I was in kindergarten.

I tread on for a while before I manage to shake that same revere and get on with the same paranoid walk I always take at this time in the morning.


	4. Chapter 3

Long time ago, sometime between Bricks of Fury and Bricks of Fury Eye Eye Eye, there was a movie that came on TV. Big Austrian guy speaking lines of bad Spanish, the terminator I think it was called. I never was much good with name-age. It opened with this sequence of beat up looking guys running through this desert of rubble and skulls while giant grey robots rumbled around on huge treads blasting at everything that looked even vaguely human. I think they killed it after the girl in the party got vaporised, one of those helmet tumbling scenes, very emotional. I sometimes wish that out little war was more like that. Then we'd know who the monsters were and who the good guys were.

You'd hope the post-apocalypse would be more of a, well, grim place. When we went to a future with Shego in charge, it was a land of grim conformity, all green and black. Drakken was somewhat more, erm, fluffy. The world ticks over like a well oiled piece of Marxist writing for the most part. Check me out, KP; I actually know what that means. The suburbs are still as insanely well kept as ever, the inner cities are cleaner, like something out of an old movie, those that are still standing. Some cities suffered under the Diablos. New York and Chicago were both badly damaged in the conflict. The army tried to make a stand on Manhattan island, for all the good it did them. The island's fairly level these days and most of the city ended up being rebuilt into Drakken's odd lopsided vision of architecture.

Enough monologue-ing I think to myself and haul myself out of one of the vents on the Middleton-Upperton causeway. Sun's just tipping the horizon. That means that the Diablo patrols are currently sitting in their little storage boxes under the central points in the roads and have been for over an hour. It also means that I have at least an hour before the chipped folks begin to stir. Got to hand it to Drakken, you'd never have thought he could learn from his mistakes but he really thought this one out.

Same time every morning I come here, trudging through the headstones of the Highfields cemetery to the same spot. I know it's not what her folks would want, but every morning I say a few words from the Torah and move one of the pebbles, to feel like I've done something. I'd leave flowers but somehow, I don't think that Kim would want that.

"Good morning, KP. How's the weather up there?"

I say the same damn thing every morning. Why? Good question. Guess I'll never know. I'm not going to talk to that head doctor. I swear she still has her chip lodged in there somewhere. Doesn't really matter what Bonnie thinks, I've been having the same damn dream for years and I don't really believe that I can get any closure while people I once knew are kept like grinning zombies by activating their own moodulator units. They claim that it's their freedom to do so, but it isn't their freedom that triggers their irrational fear of going out at night, even if they think it is.

It's nearly light. I better be getting back inside. With the sun, the curfew ends and people start waking up. As I trudge away, I look back at the bulky black marble grave, paid for by so many donations and read the inscription yet again, white letters stained red by the dawn:

_Here lies Kimberly Ann Possible. Daughter, friend, champion. She died saving the world that she loved._

Even Drakken had left it alone. It's still perfect, except for a pair of green stained handprints.


	5. Chapter 4

More mud. Uurgh. One day, I'll either get enough sleep not to need this stuff, or we'll score some better coffee. Or possibly just find someone who can actually make the stuff so it's drinkable. Somehow, everyone here seems to think that bitter black sludge is how it's meant to be. Maybe the lack of luxury makes the rest of the time easier. I'd prefer drinkable coffee but maybe that's just me.

I never really worked out how we ended up being the leaders of this little rebellion, though some of us were more obvious than others. Wade and the twins were responsible for engineering the Rufuses. I miss that little mole-rat but time marched on. They managed to get several generations of very smart breeding stock out of him though. The most genial of the last two generations have been my pocket pals but they just aren't quite the same. I'm starting to think the lack of Mexican food is having an effect. Not that bueno nacho isn't still around, it's just that like everything else legitimate in the new order, you have to be chipped to eat there.

Brick's been with me since the start and I've never really known why. After Drakken imprisoned Bonnie three nights after the prom, I'd dragged him into this. He isn't particularly bright, but he's brave, strong and surprisingly adaptable. I can still remember the smell of Bonnie's bruised, naked body as we hauled her out of that holding tank. I fought evil wearing nothing but my shoes and boxers that night, after Brick questioned if we should be manhandling a "naked chick". I guess she must've been awake for some of it because she didn't mock me when she came to, wedged between Brick's back and my chest on his bike.

Monique, well, she's here because she got caught up in it. I think she caught a blast from one of the silicon disruptors while she was still chipped and the experience terrified her. Rufus found her sobbing with maddened fear in an alleyway after the chip kicked in again.

Anne's here because we needed a doctor. She's a classic case of shellshock, has been for years, but she's still more than capable of doing good work when someone she knows of old can coax her into it.

"You broke my wife, Ronald!" he had me by the collar of that old hockey jersey, I couldn't slip out. Each time he yelled, I was fighting back tears, "you took my Kimmiecub and you broke my Anna!"

"I didn't do either of those things!" god that sounded feeble. I'm such a putz.

It was at times like this that you found out that James Possible was a man of words. It was only his rage that let him pull my slender 17 year old frame on tiptoes and he was obviously struggling. His grip was tight though, no kidding about that. Things had been going from bad to worse, it seems acceptance was the only thing that this Possible was not capable of. Mrs P was in shock and she really needed him and probably me to help her out of it, but James was grappling desperately with me, trying to throw me out of the quiet little hospital room where she sat dreamily looking out of the window. I'd noticed the deformed hybrid plush that Kim used to sleep with in her hands, held loosely. Pandaroo, I think it was called. Never could shake the smell of DNAmy on the things myself.

"Now boys, what'll Kimmie say when she finds you rough housing?"

James and I both froze in that moment and looked at Anna after she said those silly, sad little words in that dreamy voice of hers. We both had hot tears burning away, I remember that distinctly. He recovered first though.

"Don't let me catch you near any of my family ever again, you hear me Ronald?" he said in the same voice he'd threatened to fire me into space with as he threw me towards the door.

I think I saw him once more before he led the exodus. I still can't believe he left her behind. I doubt any of us will ever get the chance to forgive him.

Urgh, trust me to snap out of a daydream when they're talking about cutting into people's heads. Funny thing about Drakken is that he doesn't learn from his mistakes continuously but then he'll have a sort of spurt of practicality. The hybrid chip was one of those ideas and ramming it into the base of your skull was another. Difficult to remove, obvious if you haven't got one and it almost completely removed the possibility of credit card fraud all in one go. I suddenly feel the need to scratch my own scar. I never actually had one of the chips implanted. That would've made the first year of the occupation tolerable for me. No, I had to live with the fact that Drakken had baked up a set of Kim synthoclones and sent them wandering the streets, just to taunt me. I really hate that man.

I have a scar because Wade felt it necessary to graft what amounts to the Kimmunicator into my head so that I could pass for a normal person. It was a hack job because Anna was having one of her bad days but he did his best. The worst part of it is that I now have huge numbers of memories that aren't really mine. Some are computer simulations and I'm pretty sure some of them are analyses of Kim's fighting styles. If I'm right, the girl was being slightly untruthful with the number of styles of Kung Fu she knew. I only count 9 combat styles in my head, including the monkey kung fu.

The extraction process is a grim necessity. We can't just neutralise a compliance chip because our people would be easy prey for the Diablos and the Bonnies on the surface, who'll go after anyone without one and the surgery helps us check if we do in fact have a Bonnie on our hands.

I forget who it was who started calling all of the synthoclone models "Bonnies" but the name stuck, much to her annoyance. Admittedly, the first one we encountered was one shaped like Bonnie, if you don't count the Kim ones that had been plaguing me the afternoon before. It may well have been Brick forgetting that it was a "syntho-" Bonnie.


	6. Chapter 5

Midnight, industrial heath-land behind the old space centre.

Not the best place to be holed up on first watch. I've got a pair of rookies with me, hell, I'm pretty sure they were the ones at it the other night. Katie and Damien they said…I think. She's squirrelled up next to me looking like she's going to burst or pass out with fear and he's wedged firmly into a piece of wreckage a few yards away, obviously trying to work out how I manage to stay so damn cool. He hasn't worked out that it took being the only one left able to do anything about the situation that got me to pack up my skills in running away. That said, I'm feeling the urge right this second.

There's a trio of diablos stalking across the open ground, two of them spreading out this way. Their huge rounded forms smash what little debris there is to hide behind as they advance, crushing it under those big, red cylinder feet. Somehow, the fact that they are a bright, plastic shade of red makes them more scary than they would have been if they were coloured to look like they were genuinely armoured or in a nice traditional shade of metal. Both of this pair and most of the kids that make up the resistance these days have never actually seen these things in their neutral form. Watching happy meal toys turn into bloodthirsty giant robots is an interesting experience to say the least. I'd say it used to terrify me, but frankly, it still does. I just can't hide behind Kim anymore.

Another rumbling footfall.

Another.

I hope the kids can keep their nerve. If they start shooting, we'll be in for it. I have the biggest gun amongst us and that's only a 15 milliTesla coil gun with polarised shells. The thing can happily shatter a tank, don't get me wrong, but against these things, it'd be lucky to leave a hole the size of my head. Holes that heal. Talk about unfair advantages. That's something to do with the cybertronics used to make the things and make them grow.

The only way to bring one down is with a silicon phase disruptor blast and then to pummel them before their repair mechanisms can adjust. That's all fine and dandy when you're dealing with one of them but disruptors have short ranges and the circuits of nearby units adapt to the frequencies you use. We'd either have to catch all three in the same blast or split them up by a block or more and bring them down quietly.

Katie has our disrupter and she seems to be wetting herself. Erm…

"Katie!" I whisper with all the authority I can muster, "eyes up here. Look at me. I'm going to have Damien start shooting and fall back. I'm going to do the same, draw them in here. When you hear me yell, blast them with the disrupter, got that?"

She nodded feebly. No wonder Bonnie complains about the jobs we give her. Then again, she complains about everything. I can't help grinning at this, I'm just as bad. Hell, we have competitions at bedtime, see who had the crappiest day. We keep going and going until the exaggerations are completely insane and one of us starts laughing. And then we…crap. Concentrate boy!

Damn it, Katie's looking at me as if I'm mad. Most of them do. I think it's to do with the mismatched eyes as much as anything. Shouldn't let myself slip like that. Right, where was I?

_Damien. Hold fire and retreat that way. Web tactic. Got it?_

He nods and repeats the signals. I nod. I watch him grin as if this was one of the illicit violent video-games from the time before. He knows that rifle he's carrying can only leave fist sized holes for a few seconds. I have a horrible feeling about this.

Banging Katie's helmet to get her to stop watching him, I slip out to the side and move back in a diagonal from the robots. Finding myself the ruins of what looks like a crane, I hunker in and take aim with my cannon. Damien begins shooting on the left and I begin to try to bring my breathing into line with the steady footsteps of the robots.


	7. Chapter 6

The left side of my face is numb. It's numb and it's hot. Have I been hit? Can't have been…

I take a moment to get to my feet. I'd swear I can hear someone yelling in the distance. It's like hearing someone talking through water. There are odd bright patches in my vision and they get kinda shaky on the far left but I can see fine.

I take a few steps towards where Bonnie's crouching. She seems bothered by something. I wonder what it could be. She hasn't seemed this concerned since I was a millionaire. I find this horribly funny for some reason, I crack my lips into a grin and something seems wrong. The world seems a little off centre at the moment. My left knee hits something.

I stumble.

I wonder what I walked into. How did it get there. It wasn't there when I looked. Maybe it's a new plot from Drakken involving cunningly concealed rising obstacles in the ground. Something inside me says that's ridiculous. I can't shake the feeling that I'm right though.

One of the bright patches seemed to be hot against my nose for a second.

I snort in disbelief and taste something like salty rubber.

My shoulder hits another one of the magical obstacles and I fall over. I swear there was nothing there.

I get a look at Bonnie looking terrified. She's so beautiful and she's looking down at me, moving her mouth with no sound coming out. Those raggedy dreadlocks flail as she bends down to touch my neck. I ask what she's doing. There's tears in those wonderful dark eyes. For a moment, I'm in love…

It's cold. Correction, the back's cold. I think I'm lying down, but my eyes won't open. I can't feel the left side of my face. At least it isn't cold, it isn't hurting and it isn't wet. There's something stuck on the right side. I'm sure. Can't imagine what. Maybe I fell asleep under a book or something.

Last thing I remember. Falling in love.

Flashes.

Blood. That salty taste was my blood!

Aww man, that was an air-shell.

Maybe I was captured. If that's true, I gotta know. My hand flies up to the right of my face. I do that thing where you roll your eyes as you grapple with something you can't see. There's something fabric stuck on one side of my head. I twitch a little. Oh snap! I've been captured! The thing's stapled to my head!

I can hear something. People moving. I try to judge distance. Hard shoes on hard floors, women's shoes. Oh God, please don't be Shego. Last time, she took great joy in sticking those needle stilettos into that bullet hole in my shoulder.

Eight feet, six, four, she's at the bedside.

"Hello Ronnie," a delicate voice purrs down to me, "you needn't try to escape, it's me, Anne."

Oh thank you God!

_What happened?_ I try to croak but nothing comes out. Has she wired half of my jaw shut?

"Don't worry, Ronald, Kim'll be here soon. She'll sit with you. You lost an eye and took some damage to your ear on the left. Wade's doing what he can about the ear and I'm sure James will be able to get a new eye for you."

Oh heavens, I'm being tended by an angel with delusions. Kim's been dead more than six years, James, the bastard, left almost four years ago. I never would've imagined saying this but I want Bonnie. I don't think this experience could get any worse.

"Hey Ron."

I wake with a start. I'm lying on my back on a cold steel slab in what used to be a morgue under the county jail.

Kim's sat on a stool a few feet away looking at me. The lighting's poor and I feel horribly vulnerable lying here in a

surgical gown. If she sat a few feet further towards my ankles, she could see up it.

That said, she's wearing that little black dress from Middleton days and no tights. Her legs are crossed pointing at me. What the hell is going on? That's not normal of her and it must be cold down here, even with that cardigan. My backside begins to stick to the bench to prove a point.

"How you feeling? Mum said that that new eye dad gave you is working fine. Does it still hurt?" she asked tenderly, reaching out to touch my face. Something about this didn't seem right. She must've been at least four feet from my head.

Her touch is like silk and it has a warmth and affection that sends a shiver down my spine. The number of times I've wished for her to touch me with this much tenderness…

"Kim, you're here?" I mutter blindly. I can talk?

She laughs, "of course I am silly, I'll always be with you. We're getting married, remember?"

I reach up and put my hand onto hers, resting on my cheek. There's no bandage under it. The wind stirs her hair, at first gently and then with increasing force. It begins to whip around her face. Frantic motion begins as she starts to plummet horizontally away from me, grappler in hand. Determination, fear, sadness, gone.

There's a hand in mine. It's a wonderful mash of contradictions. It's soft and gentle, yet trimmed with weapon calluses and those from what feel like rock-climbing. Kim had hands like that but these are more delicate, less worldly. They don't seem to have that invisible strength. Instead, I can feel palpable concern in them.

"Bonnie?" I manage. Well, I think I managed to get the word out. What I was trying to say and what actually came out may have been completely different. I here a shallow grunt and feel a weight shift on the bed beside me. They found me a bed?

I hear a little stirring noise and then what feels like maybe she had her head rested on the bed beside my chest. She must've moved.

"Bonnie?" I try again, feeling like I'm pushing words out through a brush, "Anne? Kim?"

"Kinda sweet that you ask for me before Miss Perfect, Stoppable," replied a soft voice, almost dripping with annoyance. I tried to smile but I felt a sharp whack on my chest, "why couldn't you stay in cover? Why, Ron? Why did you do that to me?"

"Water…" I gasp, feeling that it was appropriate, somehow. Every coma guy asks for water.

Her soft fingers dance over my lips as she dabbed them with water. Then I feel what I hope is a straw being guided between my lips. I do my best to draw enough into my mouth to purge some of the foulness. After a few minutes of gentle sipping and luxuriating under her watchful hands and her not hitting me, I feel able to talk.

"How long have I been out?"

"Six days…it seemed touch and go for a while. They had a dozen of the rats working on you for the best part of three days."

"The rats?"

"Yeah, they were doing something like rebuilding your face. I think they did something to your ear, too."

"Great. More proof that my pet is smarter than me," I try to smile but I'm not sure if it worked. I didn't feel any response on the left. I pause for a moment because something strikes me; "what happened to me anyway?"

"You took an airburst rocked close to your head, got confused, stumbled into the open and fell over. It's a good thing Jim and Tim got there at that moment or those Bonnies would have overrun us."

I smile at the sound of her using her own name to refer to the syntho-hunters.

"Did you run out of cover to tend to me? I would have sworn…"

"Why would I do that, Stoppable? You're a dork!" she gasped with what I assume is mock disgust. We have such a healthy relationship.

"Sorry to interrupt you guys during you time," rumbled a voice into the room suddenly, damn Wade, I didn't know you could be quiet, "but I've got some news." At his Bonnie gives out a wonderful sigh and I struggle not to laugh.

"What is it, Poindexter?" her voice oozing irritation and spite.

"After much lying and editing of photographs, I've managed to secure a replacement for Ron's eye." This is news to me…

"Replacement?" I force out with a notable lack of vocal finesse. I can't think of anyone in all the time that Kim and I were wandering the world who could grow body-parts. Well, unless you count clonehappy Drakken. And thinking about it, the only time he cloned me since the whole kim-style incident was during the early days of the rebellion before I started looking beaten up. I remember holding his head under about three feet of soda until he stopped thrashing, though that means that his eyes are so much green go. Well, so much interesting flavour at the self fill in Upperton Smarty mart but that's another thing.

"Erm…well, yeah, I found a replacement by calling in a favour with some lying and creativity."

"Spill Wade, I want to know what you're going to nail into my head."

"Well, here's the thing. The only scientist I could find who manufactures synthetic human parts was one of those who departed for the moon during the great exodus four years ago. So that means I had to go through James."

"You begged James Possible and he agreed to help me? Are you kidding?"

"That's the thing, well, I lied. I said that Anna lost her eye to a troubled patient and lied so that I gave over your orbit measurements rather than hers. Unfortunately, I couldn't exactly ask for a brown eye to match yours, I had to ask of one that would match Anne's baby blues."

"So I'm going to look like David Bowie? A booyah!" It was at that moment that I realised that I would always be able to see the bright side, the Ronshine. No matter that I have a face that was a mass of scars, a tattoo I didn't want, a concealed pouch where my appendix used to be and now mismatched eyes, there's still always a Ron-ver lining.

"Yeah. Well, it's going to take some getting used to, though I managed to convince him that including her mild farsightedness wasn't going to be necessary. You're going to be going blind for a while, I'm afraid." I get the feeling that I should have been expecting to be seeing in ten minutes but that never really occurred to me. As it was, I wasn't in much of a position to notice the passage of time, I never went anywhere and Anna was as erratic as ever when it came to visiting me.


	8. Chapter 7

I love the buzzing noise that these rifles make when they fire.

The top of one of the Diablos shatters as I fire. The thing begins adjusting its course towards me, through Katie's position. It had been going towards Damien but obviously saw me as a bigger threat now. One more shot, I'm thinking. If I can breach the control column, I can immobilise it.

Despite the rate they heal, Diablos have a fairly mutual protection system, mostly because if their shape gets disrupted too much, they struggle to regenerate key systems. The mobility systems are tied into the eyes and a control nexus behind them, so it's possible to hold up a Diablo by damaging this system. Long story short, shoot eyes, stop moving. I'm rambling.

Bang.

Score!

Scratch one of the Diablos from this equation. The other two are moving up to cover it as it desperately tries to shift its more complex systems around. Damien's drawing a lot of fire from the one on the left. I hope he's ok, those green beams are nasty. Just a little closer and Katie can blast them. Oh, no.

I watch in momentary horror as Damien rises from his position and opens up with a rapid volley. I am at a loss to express my utter disgust at the bravado. The Diablo on the left begins to stomp towards him. It's now or never.

"Katie, blast them, for heavens sake!" I hammer out the words as I break cover and start running. I lost an eye doing less. Somehow my third shot manages to find the ray on the arm of the right Diablo. The silicon disruptor fires, catching all three, thankfully. Oh God, she's still stood up!

The damaged Diablo fires a global blast from that damn flamethrower. I watch helplessly as a naïve, pretty little girl disappears. Around the same time, I manage to crack the power core of the one on the right. Damien seems to be doing something right; the green ray on the one on the left isn't working anymore but he's not retreating. He may well have damaged some of its other systems too.

I'm out of ammo. The day just gets worse. I'm forced to keep running into the smouldering ruins of the flame thrower attack, trying not to think of Katie. Poor girl's lungs were undoubtedly boiled inside her. I have one thing left that can kill a Diablo, the charge we were supposed to use to destroy one of the control nodes. 5 seconds aught to do it, I think, pitching the thing overhand. Something tells me I would've made a decent quarterback.

I dive into the same cover Katie should have been using. In the last second before the blast, I tear her medallion off. The explosion makes everything go quiet for a moment and the air goes clear and thin.

I end up carrying Damien back to the sewer link. He had the sense to throw himself flat but was hit by a chunk of Diablo. He seems more than a little down about Katie. I'm guessing it's deeper than a simple male bravado thing. I'm guessing that he must've promised to protect her.

We keep trying to drum it into the new kids that if they follow their training, they'll be ok, but they still tend to freeze. This was supposed to be a milk run. Blow up a Bueno Nacho sign and run for it before one of the hunters arrives to deal with the situation, sounds simple, rarely is. Why I always end up with a bag of rookies whenever it goes south, I'll never know.

"She didn't make it…" I hear him mutter as one of the veterans leads him away. I'm sure that with a lot of caffeine-mud and a long sit down, he'll get over it. People in this life either survive or become like Anna and she puts the chip back in and sets them to happy. They're back on the surface but they're no real threat to us. I'm hoping he'll be ok. I might even go through the torment of recounting the first two deaths I encountered in the field.

I truly hope it doesn't come to that.

* * *

Author's note: Chapters are place Haphazardly because I post them as I finish and proof them. 8 may take a while as i'm specifically calling in help with the proofing and editing. It's an important chapter. 


	9. Chapter 8

A gentle but seriously strong finger runs around the base of my jaw with loving care, then flicks out to grab the whole of my chin in a vicelike grip. Fingernails that may well be carefully manicured snag in some of the scrapes and cuts, drawing more blood, sending more pain impulses. My face gets jerked around so that I can look into a mirror that makes up the far wall of the cell.

It's hard to believe that I've wasted away so much in the last three days. I guess constant physical abuse and no sleep will do that to a guy. I'm sitting loosely on my ankles, kneeling is too active a description. True to form, my pants have slid down to reveal my naked backside, mangled as it is with fresh welts. The haunted, translucent viridian hand vices on my jaw and its twin, snaking its way down to caress my pectoral muscle with a sickly affection, need no introduction. I sag down, barely able to contain my own weight, resting against those powerful hands and she seems to enjoy that.

My ribs are beginning to show, something that years of cheese and spicy beef has successfully prevented up to this point. I even take a moment to stare through bruised eyes at the fact that I seem to have lot more muscle than I would have ever guessed, well shaped, though nothing compared to my time with the muscle enhancer ring. My face, once again, is mashed. This happens a lot, more than I ever let on to Kim, but hell, it's been happening for so long I barely notice any more.

She twists me around so that my knees are still pointing parallel to the mirror but my shoulders are facing it and leans in so that I can feel her breasts on my back. I can feel the barb things, I assume they're sharks' teeth or something similar, that run around the top of her bustier digging it. I'm praying those other points aren't her nipples.

She's simply pouring out of that bodice and the choice of panties and stockings match it well; the choice of a deep dried blood shade seems to make her greenish complexion glow with false life and if she weren't so damn evil, I'd find her painfully desirable.

"Shego, I hate to ask this, but have you gained weight? The suit just isn't fitting…" I slur out through swollen lips. Maybe if I get her mad she'll spend herself and go away again.

"Now now, Ronnie-poo, we're only just getting started and I got dressed up all pretty for you."

She starts kissing my neck, skirting the bruised patches where it's the most sensitive. I shudder, barely able to contain how good it feels. How could she be so gentle and yet so cruel? He teeth play briefly over the damaged nerve bundle that he's used to render me unconscious eight times with now. Must resist.

Her legs wrap around me and pull, yanking me off my knees and making the chain that runs from my wrists through a loop on the floor jingle. The sharpened edges on the back of those boots cut lightly into side as I'm pulled in and twist to look up at her, despite my better judgement.

I daren't contemplate what I see in her eyes at that moment, desire and fondness that I've only ever seen in two places before. Hot tears well into my eyes and begin to leak onto my bruises. I blink as those hot lines burn their way down my already fiery skin. It gets even harder to stop the flow as she does what comes next.

"Awww, baby," she mutters with what sounds hauntingly like genuine affection and loving compassion and bends in closer to me. She graces a light peck on my right cheek to cut off the tear, then moves to kiss the left. In that brief second before her lips gently brush the skin, she whispers the words, "don't worry baby, I'm here."

"I thought Stockholm syndrome was supposed to work the other way around, witch," comes out in the shallow voice of one losing a battle with tears. I'm trying, God, I'm trying but each time she does something like this, it gets harder.

* * *

Four days and change since I was captured. I've been moved twice and I've counted fourteen different outfits on Shego, some very attractive on her. I've been left alone for some time now, only distrurbed by the pair of goons who came in and tasered me so that they could hose me down, scrub me viciously and dress me in a dinner suit. Now I'm sat in a chair that feels like it has magnets in it while they set up a sumptuous candle-lit spread in front of me. I sit, scowling and waiting for Shego to arrive, dressed in whatever monstrosity of a dinner dress she has picked out.

I'm left for some time, as the candles begin to burn down. It's funny, but even in the den of an evil monster with delusions of romance, the wait still makes me feel like I've been stood up. Time ticks by and I even begin to do things that come with being stood up on a date, such as fiddling with my cutlery and picking at the bread basket. I do the latter carefully; I may be weak with hunger but if I wolf it down, I may be sick. They may have even poisoned it but that seems unlikely, they haven't asked me any questions, aside from the occasionally taunt in question form.

The door opens. For the briefest of seconds, I contemplate telling Shego that she looks beautiful, if only to put her off guard and get a shot in with my heavy manacles. The suffering I'll endure as a result has got to be worth it, just to put a mark on that grinning face of hers. Treat me like a lover…

It isn't Shego. My heart hits the base of my bowels and I feel the not unfamiliar feeling of tearful rage breaking thorough to the surface.

A beautiful pair of green eyes, not sea spray like Shego's but a rich, glowing shade look at me with such hope that I can barely contain my feelings. I sit and simmer for a few seconds before a perfect bottom and worried look sets itself down onto the seat opposite me. She's wearing the dress she had picked out for the prom. Could this get any worse.

"Hey Ron," Kim's voice mutters quietly across the table. I can't keep quiet.

"Kim! How the devil are you? No wait, let me field that one, you're dead! Many times over! You're a stinking synthoclone, without feelings or even solid muscle, programmed and sent to make my life miserable. Let me tell you how I killed the last seven of you that he sent shall I Kim?!!" I howled as I began to let my speech degrade into an orgy of cursing, bitterness and hate. It took less than a minute for the erstwhile Kim to flee the room in tears. The things have very similar emotions to humans I know, but this isn't Kim and I don't care for it one jot.

* * *

She came again next in the darkest hours of the night. I woke from the faint tendrils of hollow sleep that I was grasping at to the noise of the door being opened softly. I was awake and alert in seconds. More than once I the last few years I've been attacked in my sleep and this week has been a rollercoaster of this.

The buzzing howl of Shego's glow and the potent strobe effect fills the room for a few moments as I'm beaten to within an inch of my life by kinetic impacts. Beyond my own grunts and the howl of the blasts, the only noise I hear in that darkness is a gentle, teary sobbing.

The noise, the light and the immediate pain stops and the moment hangs pregnant for minutes. Finally one of us speaks.

"You made Kimmie cry, Ronald," mutters Shego's hard voice in the darkness, loaded with emotion.

"The Ron-man plays the game his way, Shego," I reply with as much of the happy twang of old as I can muster as the blizzard of painful flashes begins again.

* * *

I lay there in perpetual darkness for an unknown amount of time. I'm guessing it was a while because they kept turning on the sprinklers. After realising the intent, I shuffled around on the floor until I was over the grating in the middle and drank from the opposite side of the flow from my ruined, filthy lower half. I'd swear that Shego can see in the dark, the number of shots that hit below the belt. Maybe she was aiming during the flashes.

The door opens in the dark but I'm too weak to fight back. Tender hands tie something over my eyes and then begin to strip me of the wreckage of the dinner jacket. I feel bright light bleeding in through the edges of the scarf tied around my head and hear the soft, almost concerned breathing of whatever henchman is taking care of me this time.

Slowly and gently, I am washed thoroughly and soft clothing is pulled onto me. I get helped to my feet and hear movement in the room as two more figures enter, moving uneasily and then place something on the metal floor. Something that stands on legs. I get gentle manoeuvred into position and lain down on what turns out to be a very soft bed. The someone moves the chains a little through the hoop so that I can lie down.

I roll away. I'm just praying that the person tending me isn't Shego, trying to force some gratitude on me. I feel my aching flesh sink into the fabric of the bed and curl up facing away from by benefactor.

The weight shifts on the bed and a distinct uneasy feeling grips me as I catch the scent of femininity on the figure. My hands are moved up from over my groin as a pair of slender shoulders move between my arms. I'm beginning to doubt if it's Shego and all that's good in me is raging against the first instinct to choke her. Her hips wiggle, forcing my foetal form to accept and curl around her. My nose against the nape of her neck, we fit together so perfectly that I can't feel anything but comfort, regardless of the wounds she presses against.

All the strain of the previous days melts away as the darkness returns and I let my head tilt through the soft hair that covers it. She purrs softly as I melt into her, so happy to have this mysterious angel all to myself for a moment.

* * *

Author's Note: I'm hoping that my decision to place this story as an M classification is vindicated now, despite my lack of strong language or overt violence. The whole point of the story is kind of watching as Ron goes through his trials and comes out of it a man, though that's some distance off at this point.

Comments and points for improvement other than my upload rate are always welcome.


	10. Chapter 9

Beautiful sunlight finds my eyes and plays over my face. I open them slowly, hoping that there is something other than pain to be had on the other side. I see red. Lots of red. My mind dances through the events of the night before and I have one horrible feeling.

My hands are no longer bound and there is no way that I'm still in my interrogation chamber. The steel and glass construction had no windows and this room definitely has. I look around, realising that I'm lying in a bed in what looks like a Frat house in a university movie. There are two walls full of trophies. Some are for things like cheerleading or dance but some are obviously mine. They're for things like football. I've never played football in my life, not counting the whole, girls like sports debacle.

Ok, I admit that I'm giving a little bit of credence to the possibility that the last five years of my memory are just a horrible dream invented by post mission trauma. I have Kim curled against me, smiling serenely and I feel so happy. Then again, a dream won't explain the bruises, chipped teeth and probably cracked eye orbit I have right now.

Wait.

I run my tongue over my teeth; there's no broken teeth, my eye feels fine and I'm only achy, not suffering horribly.

Regardless of whether I'm dreaming now, whether this is truth or fiction or some horrible scheme to hurt me, I decide to enjoy the feeling. In the grim version of my life that I remember, I never told Kim that I loved her and that tore me up as she died trying to stop Shego taking Nakasumi-San from the streets of Tokyo. I feel like this is a moment that I may never be able to spend again.

"I love you, Kimberly," I force out through tears as I hold her near and pray that she won't fade or dissolve into synthoplasm.

"Mmmm…I love you too Ronnie," she replies dreamily, "what's wrong, why are you crying, baby?"

She pulls away slightly and rolls over, still in my arms, facing me. I'm unable to contain myself as tears break from my eyes and she gently caresses them from my cheeks with a delicate thumb stroke. She's so beautiful; those big green eyes so full of caring and love that I only ever dreamed would be aimed at me.

"I feel so happy and yet so sad because I feel like this is a dream or something worse and I'm going to be forced to wake up and you won't be here anymore," I let go. I can't hide this from her. Anyone else but not her.

"Don't be silly, Beautiful," she smiles at me. I feel like I'm going to melt, "you just had a bad dream, that's all. Come here."

I'm pulled into wonderful, strong arms and held with such conviction. After a while, I look up and see the face of what I love so much. It's not the same as the Kim I remember plummeting to the streets and smoke of Tokyo and it obviously wouldn't be.

Older and fuller, she has grown into herself somewhat. In some ways, her frame has become more like that of Shego, almost buxom. Never thought I'd have a reason to use a word like that. Her face is narrower now, time has burned away the puppy fat from her teenage cheeks but her eyes are still there, green and playing across mine with a searching intensity.

I find myself praying with utter conviction as I notice a small diamond on her finger. It must be my doing. Maybe I've died and this is what heaven looks like, though why would I be a jock in heaven?

* * *

I'm being led to a lecture on advanced human behaviour. I'm not sure what that means and I spend the entire journey looking for chip scanners and maintenance hatches in case we need to escape. The lack of a weapon is troubling me. This place has the same serene feeling that the surface has everywhere, it feels like a Pleasantville of some kind. Everything seems to be deeply into the '50s, though that's probably just a side effect of the fact that most people are so doped up on Moodulator effects that they don't feel the need for mind alteration. I haven't seen a bar in nearly four years and violence has disappeared from TV and computer games. Not that I've been able to access the web in some time, but I imagine that pornography went the same way. Most people just turn their mind to love and wander around until someone reciprocates.

I'm looking around at the malt shops and stalls selling delicately flavoured dainties, euphoria allows people to draw almost untold joy from such things, something I struggle to understand a little. Hardship makes it hard to find differences in little things like that.

Every now and then, I look across at Kim, seeing her concern about my tension. I can't shake it, even though I haven't seen a single one of the Bonnie models. I feel like I'm being watched by something that seems to have a malign edge to it.

"Ronnie, you don't have to look out for me here, remember. Most of the villains are in jail, Wade has this area wired with sensors and the campus security here at North-western are the best in the business. You were the one who negotiated their placement with Jack Hench. They know every trick in the trade."

"North-western? I knew this place seemed familiar. They did that crossover on Agony County here, right?"

"Are you feeling alright? We had this discussion two years ago when we came on the campus tour. You couldn't believe we were coming to the same college. You've been on edge all morning, what's going on with you, Mr Stoppable?" she's grinning with this as if there's some deep joke in it. I find this more than a little unsettling.

Mr Stoppable…she calls my dad that sometimes, when it isn't Don, but never me. Wait a minute, engagement ring…

"Oh God, are we getting married soon?" I ask before I think. This train of thought it making me more than a little uncomfortable as the world seems far too alien to give credence.

She's turned so that her chest is straight on to me, confusion reigning in those emerald pools, have I just said completely the wrong thing? Why so many questions?

"Ronnie, the date's been set for months. We're taking the jet back home on Tuesday and Minister Luther from Kenya is going to be performing the ceremony…what's wrong?" her eyes light up as I feel so overwhelmed that I stagger back. I've seen, or possibly dreamed seeing more than a few friends die horribly in front of me and yet this strikes me in a cold, thin way that none of those horrors ever have.

I stumble back into a large guy I've never seen before. He could have been a successful henchman if he wanted, pretty much solid muscle.

"Ron, dude, what's up?" grumbles back a response as he deftly catches the books I dislodged.

"Sorry. Wait, I know you?" I stumble. I know a jock in a reality like this? I mean I get on well with Brick in the dream world I've spent my last five years in apparently but that was a necessity.

"Dude, you're the running back, of course the offensive tackle knows you!" ok, if I'm the running back, this makes a little more sense, at least explaining the trophies. MVP? Who knows, maybe even that.

"Ronnie, you're scaring me now," I look back at the trembling Kim who spoke those words at me. She seems genuinely troubled. I'm beginning to get the feeling that I've genuinely gone mad, I'm in a heavenly place with the woman I love and thought I'd lost and I'm trying to find the hidden traps that should by rights be behind every door. There is something very wrong with this picture and I'm starting to think that it may be me.

"I really don't know, KP, is there some kind of head specialist I could go talk to? You should get to the lecture, though."

"There's no way I'm leaving my fiancé when he needs me, Ron. We're going to the teaching hospital, I'm sure my mum's name will get us help quickly."

Before I can stop myself, I feel myself questioning the logic of this, "why would quoting the name of one mental case get you help with another one?"

"My mother is a neurosurgeon, Ron, not a mental case, what is wrong with you?"

All I could come up with was shaking my head sadly.

* * *

Right now I'm questioning what I'm doing here. After much time spent assuring Kim that I'm fine, we finally make it to the Advanced Human Behaviour lecture. I still have no idea what I'm doing here. I don't think I've seen normal human behaviour in nearly five years.

The lecturer is harping on about how stress can trigger bad dreams and scenarios in fantasy that can seem more real than what is actually occurring. I find myself sitting back; not paying much attention, feeling like this is far too convenient for my current situation. I know all about stress related delusion and denial. The lovely Anna Possible has been a classic case of that for the last four years. She's been getting a little better as time goes by and it sinks in that James isn't around anymore and that we live in a squalid underground complex most of the time, but she still has Kim's ghost acting as her major helper. In some ways, I like talking to Anne because she and that Kim ghost, permanently frozen in confusion as to whether I was good enough to take to the prom, is kind of reassuring that no matter how strange the world gets, I can always count on KP to look down on me.

I'm not entirely sure where that came from. Guess there's something unresolved in there.

I look up as the professor is explaining something about how dreams work from the base of the sub-meridial juncture and represent the firing of neurons in a test cycle. Considering the experience I've had over the years with magic and psychic powers, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume there's more to it than that.

"Professor? Is there a common ground here between dreams and the synthetic memory scenarios that are brought about by the use of the paranoia setting on a mark-iii mood emulator chip?" I have my hand up and the question is asked before he can recover from taking a breath to continue. I can feel an unbelieving Kim boring holes into the side of my head. I'm not sure if the jargon I used tripped something off or whether I'm traditionally not meant to know any of this stuff…

"Mr Stoppable. It's not often you do anything but sleep in my classes, now you're making up terms? Must you be such a problem?" At this, I raise an eyebrow. I've never been a problem child in class. Clown maybe but years with Barkin have shown me that silence is golden. Something, however, says that I should press this.

"I'd just like the answer to the question. I never did work out whether the mark-iii actually created the images or whether the brain did it itself under stimulus. If you can shed some light; that would be marvellous." I keep my expression as neutral as possible. Well, as neutral as I can, Kim looks like she's going to spontaneously combust beside me.

"Firstly, it isn't possible to synthetically control a person's mood, though it is possible to synthetically influence them with drugs. What you seem to be suggesting sounds like some kind of chip, which I assure you is quite impossible to create. Now moving on…"

"Sorry, Prof. are you genuinely saying that you've never heard of Cyrus Bortle? The man comes up with a new chip to mess with the mind once a month or so."

"Mr. Stoppable. If you disturb my class once more with your fantasies, I'll be forced to ask you to leave."

"Fantasy? After little miss 'your prom date makes a statement' here," I throw a thumb at Kim, who seems shocked and confused at this, "jumped my at the Middleton Daze festival under the influence of a mood emulator mark-i, I became a believer. Now, with both of us in your class, you're not willing to take our experience on board?" Either I'm completely overestimating the cards I actually have in my hand and the amount of back up Kim can or will provide, or I'm going to get an answer here.

The professor seems ready to burst at this defiance. I think I played the hand perfectly; I'm just not sure what game we're actually playing here.

"Mr. Stoppable, please leave. The future Mrs. Stoppable may remain as long as she can contain the shame of this altercation. Make no mistake, if your finals look to have been copied from the works of your wife, you will fail Stoppable."

I rise to my feet, unable to contain the fact that I just baited a Professor into admitting that he didn't know something, albeit not in so many words and wonder why Kim didn't at least point out the truth of the moodulator thing. Regardless, I think there's something I can do to settle this.

* * *

With almost an hour of the lecture still to go, I settle myself onto the grass of the common between a guy reading poetry to a trio of expectant looking girls and a pair of girls sunbathing. As I settle into a cross legged position, I realise who one of the sunbathers actually is. Forgetting what I've learned so far about this place, I switch on the best grin I can and turn to her.

"Heya, Bonnie, how's paradise for you?" I take a few moments as a burning hot gaze is turned on me. I'm starting to realise that I've made a mild mistake.

"What do you want, Stoppable? Isn't your keeper supposed to keep you out of my way or something?"

"I'm taking it that in this reality, we either never hooked up or had a horrendous break up then…"

She just lays there, soft dusky skin creasing slightly as she arches her back to look at me in disbelief. I can feel a million thoughts burning in her mind as she tries desperately to come up with the sort of response that the pre-prom Bonnie would have done.

"Ewww…" is all that she manages, disgust oozing from every pore. In some ways I find this utterly adorable.

* * *

Author's note: Yes, this is a tribute to the Wonderful Fairytale works of CloudMonet. Sorry, dude, you're going to hate what I'm using Belinda for, but most of this is metaphor. There are a number of fake realities in this story, mostly tributes to the works of my favourite authors on this site. Take it as the twisted tribute that it is. 


	11. Chapter 10

I reach out one hand to touch the shaking flesh before me. There's a strange calm hanging over my mind and my breathing is still and cool. At any other time, I'd be shaking with anticipation or confused beyond reason but right now, there's nothing in this world that seems more right. I feel a gentle breath escape her lips as my hand moves up her arm towards the crook of her shoulder.

Her hand moves up to find mine as I gently trace the line of her collarbone with the fingers there, finally twisting to take hers in mine as I reach the dimple of her throat. Deep, dark eyes shine out from beneath those dark locks, the faintest hint of tear blending with the creases of joy found there. One heavy thumb sweeps those little hurts away as my left hand graces that clear, pristine skin. After all that we have been through, still so delicate. Like a flower in the dirt.

"Ron…I," she mutters faintly, barely breathing out the words as I smile back at her. She begins to turn away from me.

"Hey, shhhh. I'll be here, you know that," I reply with more conviction than I knew I had and realised that was the truth as I sank down to lie behind her, pulling her hand close as I fell. A few moments pass, filled with gentle sobs that seem half-hearted, lacking any drama or hate.

"You know I'm not her, don't you. I'm not either of them," those words hurt her and hurt me, burning through lungs hardened by years of yelling and smoke. Those words hit me with something like a dagger of truth, like the light of God had shone through the heavens. A million thoughts of lost loves over the years flooded to me and somehow, the mental heavenly wind carrying them through just continued to blow, carrying nothing but the gentle smile that I had seem each day since Kingsley Mount and strangely nothing else came close. I began to laugh, a long, bitter humour that carried all my doubts away.

"If that's what this is about, I'm under no illusions," I manage to squeeze out through my peals, "I know who I'm kissing right now," as I burry my head into her neck, the rumble in my chest continuing, making her moan slightly as it passed into her body.

"Don't laugh at me, Stoppable. You know full well what I mean," she cried quietly as a beautiful form encased in a slim crop-top turned towards me. Still, after all this time, it takes my breath away, as if her delicate hands were drawing it from me and coiling it about them like a silken scarf. I gaze clearly into her still cool eyes, cutting through her tears with my own.

Hands dance gently to her cheeks and pull her close to me, close to the point where our noses are almost touching. As I gaze, it's as if a thread is pulling on my heart but it isn't sinking, simply opening and I feel the smile that I haven't felt in too long, rising through my skin. It breaks through like a whale breaching the surface as years of hardened expressions melted like sleet.

Reflected back at me in those cool eyes, I see darkness that I can't fathom and her shock at plunging into it, a thousand years and training that she hadn't believed in coming to the surface. Her surprise is silenced before it can grow as my lips seek hers, each with eyes wide, seeking answers. After a few moments, I give in and simply pursue my answers through more primitive means.

"I take it I'll do as a substitute then," asks a faint voice.

"Substitute for something better?" I smile as the words come out, "no, not even close."

"I'm not as good?" I never thought I'd hear doubt like that from Bonnie Rockwaller.

"So much worse and so much better. Because you're you. Not them."

I took that moment to let my body seek its centre and open, the first lesson that Sensei taught me during my sophomore turn at Yamanuchi. I feel everything that is going on about me, the beat of her heart, the sound of her tears cutting down her cheeks, the caress of her breath and the faint light in her eyes. In that moment, I know what I must do.

I begin to slide downwards towards the base of her crop top and just keep smiling.

"I'm going to kiss you like only someone who wants you for you would."

I feel her tense in expectation and I suspect that this would be her first time. I gently skirt around her delicate breasts and kiss in little feather touches to the edge of her ribs. My hands dart onto the band of her sweats, knowing that's what she assumes is to occur.

Her shallowly held breath explodes out of her as my lips seal onto her flat tummy and play her little bellybutton like a trombone. She cries out, only to have the breath stolen from her as fingers dance over the edges of her muscles, tickling without remorse.

"How dare you…" she manages as I slam into her and kiss her like I've wanted to kiss her for some time.

* * *

Author's Note: If Fazhou is reading this, there are others who agree with you! 


	12. Chapter 11

After spending a few moments trying to shake off Bonnie and her terrified disgust at the suggestion that we hopped on the good foot and did the bad thing, I get back to what I was supposed to be doing.

Dozens of weary feeling channels snap open as Ji, Li and Chi begin coursing through their places in my natural order. Lesson 6 of Yamanuchi/Tibet boot camp; once you are open, you must be the calm at the centre of the maelstrom. Took me three whole weeks, a beating and having most of my bones broken to realise what that meant. Took me almost twenty seven minutes to undo the damage they did to get me there.

I feel senses that I shouldn't have snake out through air, grass and ether to find things to draw strength from. While I wouldn't draw from them, I probe each of those around me and find them sadly lacking in vital energy. It seems troubling on a sunny day. Wisps of energy start to come in from the trees and grass of the area and I drag them near to haul myself from the ground. It seems like a waste of power but there are spirits that really dislike this sort of thing living in the soil.

I hear gasps and shock around me. I'm guessing this Ron doesn't make a show of his powers like this. I know what I look like, Bonnie's told me over the years. Drifting like a ship in an arcane breeze, hair flying and my skin cracking under the strain of the power I'm trying to contain. The parasitic draw is supposed to be only for emergencies but I feel like this warrants it.

I reach out, sending my mind in search of one of the three I know are capable of receiving me. I find none of them. Not the master, lord or greatest student of the esoteric arts can be found. Desperately, I cast for any receptive mind, anyone I may have trained myself. This Bonnie obviously isn't a candidate. I cast around the campus, feeling hundreds of students stir under my mind's caress but still I find nothing, and feel a sickly absence. I throw my thoughts out further, reaching, probing. There is nothing beyond a mile from here. Just void. Silence.

I crash to the earth with a thump. There's a crowd of maybe seventy people gathered around, gawking. Some of them start to applaud, as if it were a cheap trick for their amusement.

In one of those bon-diggety moments of clarity, I think to glance at my forearm. My right forearm. There are tattoos there, right where it left them.

蓮花愛缺席

A lotus flowers for love absent.

Words that still carry so much meaning and thanks to the careful lack of context, have so many more. I remember someone asking why I wrote it in Chinese rather than Japanese. I just smiled and asked where Mystical Monkey Power came from. They didn't know. Neither did I.

I nearly tear the sleeves off to find the rest of the pattern, the living talisman that I wear each day. It's all there, the complex pattern of nearly-words and dragon strokes and lotus petals. I need to know if there is a better reason for this being here than what I already know…I need Kim.

* * *

Author's Note: Yes, the 'poem' is my work and it's patchy, mostly because it's a style and a language alien to me. I'd appreciate anyone offering to help with my crude attempt at Classical Chinese poetry, as this is close to my heart and important for the story as a whole.

It should read **Lian hua kai, xiang nian ai. on the reedit.**


	13. Chapter 12

Rain is one of those things that I've gotten used to over the last month and a half. The thing I haven't gotten used to is currently circling me. His lank fur and distorted grin pulled up around gleaming dark eyes and thick blunt teeth.

"You'll never defeat me, Buffoon," he shrills in that odd semi-English accent of his, "prophecy or not, you're no monkey master!"

"Sorry, Monty, I'm not one for giving in," I reply, grinding my foot deeper into the mud to find a stone that I'm praying I sensed right. He certainly has the advantage of training and discipline here. Blood leaks out of my many cuts for a second as we pause, staring at each other.

He surges forward with little of no indication of motion and lashes out into one of those strange punch-kicks of his. I'm still not sure whether to treat them as normal punches, kicks or something completely other. He's more than I thought he was in my earlier days, but it seems that he's been working hard on getting ahead of me without using more magic. Another blow hammers through as he switches to a stance using one of his arms and one of his legs to balance and throw out a hail of blows with his others. He isn't just using monkey style any more. There's something more in there too.

"Problem Buffoon, not recognising the moves of the red-head?" he hoots as I find the front of my gi clasped in one of his hairy paws.

Why didn't I see it? He seems to have adapted some of the moves Kim made up over the years. Slower, more cautious and somehow more refined, but still something akin to her styles. About a week after I started fighting him, I realised that Kim probably didn't know 16 styles of Kung Fu as she occasionally gloated. Considering she thought mantis chuan boxing was actually Kung Fu in the first place, I'm actually guessing she knew 16 movies worth.

At that thought, I switch into Mantis, attempting to pool my resources. As a completely internal style, it's not that taxing and is unusual enough to be difficult to block. Right now I'm wishing that I'd been able to learn what that guy, Immortal, had been talking about. Testicles on the inside would be really useful…

Fist catches a blow to the lower jaw as one of my flurries makes contact. He flips out of the way, only to find that I've closed the gap before he could move. His momentum ends up earthed into my chest as he falls to the floor. I feel a moment of smugness before I realise that his feet have grabbed the gi and pulled it down so that it restrains my arms. How he did this as he fell is another question.

My legs disappear. I'm not sure where they are as I hit the mud.

His weight is on me now, that hooting laughter drowning out everything for a second.

His weight vanishes. I hear him splash into the mud and realise there are a pair of booted feet beside my head. The teacher has finally moved.

"Well done, Fiske, but you lack control. Stoppable, you tried too hard and lost your way. What have you learned?"

"That the local mud tastes like chocolate and that I should have paid attention while you were passing on Mantis to me."

"Not a bad answer but I'd throw in something mystic sounding if you're talking to one of the Japs or the Shaolin. Get up," for an Englishman, he has an oddly neutral accent. I take his hand and follow his ponytail off the grounds. I'm still in the dark as to how he seems to stay dry.

"Yes Master Immortal," I mutter at his back.

* * *

Author's Note: Introducing completely new characters is always so exciting. The reasons for his name become clear soon enough. 


	14. Chapter 13

I keep running, as if there's no hope left whatsoever. I'm not sure why I do that, given that there's no hope left. Seems like a really dumb thing to say in hindsight.

Another small explosion tears a chunk out of one of the neighbouring buildings, showering me with more dust and brick scraps. I've never seem the variety of Cybertronic that's chasing me before so I'm guessing that its something that's just rolled out of production. Though members of one of the underground movements liberated him in the early stages of Drakken's takeover, Nakasumi still provided an almost unhealthy number of toy designs. The l'il Diablo figures would have been enough but some of the other toys proved more deadly to us in the long run than the versatile flagship of the range.

You wouldn't have thought that they would have been so popular in middle America, given that they look like devils and all, but they still took control.

This one looks something like an insect and was probably a butt ugly toy. Too ugly to make it into the main line up of l'il Ninios toys anyway.

* * *

It's armed with some kind of gravitronic beam, the sort of thing that Drakken's so keen on. I'm forced to dodge for the slightest of seconds as a chunk of masonry is hurled at my head. I duck around the edge of a corner. Glancing back at its strange triangular head and odd stalking legs, I waste a few precious seconds wondering how nobody notices the damage that these things do whenever they chase anything. Maybe Drakken has yet another type of droid to follow the others around to fix up the damage.

As the skinny thing hauls itself up to a higher vantage, trying to spot me, I hear some kind of crunching, clacking noise coming from over my shoulder. I know that noise. My blood runs cold. You'd think the last thing I'd want to see would be a Diablo. You'd be wrong. Behind me, stands a Bigggrin.

No, wait, standing isn't the right word. The things have big, flat feet when they're just toys but the things turn into huge racks of tracks when it grows. Right now, the female version of Teekyboo is pointing a twin plasma cannon, nine missiles and a selection of small arms at me.

Crap.

Without thinking, I dart around the corner then realise my mistake. A few moments with some of my traditional home cooked family panic and I find myself. Panicking, I dive nimbly to the side as a gravitronic beam hits where I was stood.

Ok, in all honesty, I run screaming like my ass is on fire.

Conveniently, I think the stalker loses me in the huge cloud of dust and rubble that replaces the building I was sheltering behind the corner of. The Bigggrin must have fired one of its missiles or its cannons, or both. It takes a few moments to register that there was probably someone in that building when it went up.

I can't imagine dying would help those poor folks so I put it out of mind for now. I need a way into the sewers, a tricky problem given the weight of manhole covers and my lack of a pry.

My only option at the moment looks to be getting the Bigggrin to fire at me and blow a chunk out of the road. Then hope that there aren't Bonnies on the way. Why can't this ever be simple?

Things should never be normal, but simple would be nice!

Right think…what would Kim do?

Er…

Look great and jump higher than it should be possible. Well, both of those are out. What have I got left? Monkey Kung Fu, a natural talent for making inappropriate jokes and a selection of bon-diggety dancing skills. Not all that much in retrospect.

_Wing it?_

_Wing it. _After that brief exchange with my inner Ron-ness, I decided to wing it. I even caught myself nodding in a set jawed fashion after the conclusion. I am so not built for this stuff.

Seizing the advantage, I hurl myself through the smoke and dust and begin climbing up a drainpipe on one of the less damaged buildings. I know the basic search patterns that the flying bunny things use and I'm hoping that this clacker has some support. True to form.

There's a little spotter bot, the type Drakken used to keep in stock all the time. Small orb the size of a soccer ball with a triangular module stuck through it. Perfect.

Thinking of a cool stunt from the 'Moon over Ios' film series, I hurl myself into the air, landing heavily twin footed on top of the little drone. My weight shift caused it's processor to panic and transfer motive power and we half flew, half fell towards the clacker. I'd only get one chance before its beam hit me. I leapt again, savouring the air brushing my cheeks, a little part of me imagining that it was Bonnie doing the brushing.

My hands find metal and I flick my legs out, desperately trying to gain purchase on its slippery neck. The triangular head looks down at me in the mechanical equivalent of confusion for a moment as I just grin at it cheerfully.

"Does not compute?" I ask, my grin growing even larger as it shook its head slowly. With a quick jerk of my thumb I point to the Bigggrin that's launching a missile clean at my heat signature.

For the briefest of moments, I feel like the clacker is thinking something along the lines of 'clever girl' like in that movie, Prehistoric park.

Still grinning, I let go of it, plummeting back to the ground, using what I learned from Monty to try and get the best of it. I'm in the middle of the handspring as the missile detonates and I'm able to use the shockwave to guide me far further than a normal jump would allow.

I skid to a halt in a really deep martial arts crouch, with my ass pointing straight at the Bigggrin. I look back and smile at it.

"Nice view?" I ask as I begin to scrabble out of the way.

Good jokes come to those who wait.

Unfortunately, I waited too long. The missile struck rather closer than I had hoped. Showers of something strangely soft begin to pummel me and I crash to the floor. Looking around desperately, I see that the thing was filled with small balls of rubber. Non-lethal. This is bad.

A pair of delicate feet set down next to me and I look up as a hand taser is brought to bear on me. I stare up in horror as copies of all three of the women I'm most attracted to smile maliciously down at me.

* * *

Author's Note: Updates may end up pettering out for a while as i'm going to be thrust into a home situation with very limited connectivity, though i'll make sure to keep writing and i'll update in fits and starts from then on.


	15. Chapter 14

I start shoving my way through the crowds trying to get out of the social sciences lecture theatre entranceway. There are more than a few unkind words about my character being bandied about and I really couldn't care less. I still need to find Kim.

A few people push themselves violently away from me, like I'm on fire. I'm starting to guess that over the top mystical demonstrations are not common here. That doesn't seem right, there aught to be villains coming after me and Kim all the time. At the very least, Monkey Fist is capable of doing most of what I can and has more impressive crap to throw around if need be.

Heh heh, monkeys throwing crap.

No time for that.

I need to find Kim.

There she is. Why do I feel like the whole scenario here is intended to make me jealous. She's leaning against the doorframe, rocked back on her left heel with her folder clasped across her bosom with both hands. This tall guy that I eventually twig looks a lot like Mankey is leaning in with his bulky arm propped against the frame above her. She's looking up at him with something like shocked admiration. As I said, the whole thing is geared towards making me jealous.

I really don't have time for this.

"Sorry Mankey-like being, I need her for a sec," I announce as I step through, thrusting my hand forward. I'm not really brooking any argument and I'm guessing that my posture and the like are showing it as I sense him shift back and raise both hands to chest level.

I lead Kim a few steps and I'm about to speak when her angry diatribe begins.

"Ron, you've got to let me have friends of my own. Johnny was just asking me if I liked the photography exhibit the other day and you've been behaving oddly all day now. What's your damage?"

"Shut up for a second, you can go back to your conversation when I've asked what I need. Where and when did I get this tattoo, Kim? It's deathly important," I demand calmly, pulling the last of the tattered stitching around the shoulder free of it's moorings. Her eyes widen at the sight of my skin art, which is odd because we were naked this morning.

Wait, was it actually there this morning?

I begin scanning back into my memory to try and find out.

"Ronnie, you know how I feel about changing things on our bodies. You better have spent the last hour doodling that onto your arm in sharpie, because if not, you just wasted your money on a really big tattoo!"

I shoot her a look that speaks volumes.

"This much art would be the culmination of months of work. Are you saying that it wasn't there this morning?" I ask, the taste of incredulity rising.

"Of course it wasn't there this morning. I watched you in the shower; how would I miss something that ugly?!" she seems to truly hate it. Ironic on some level.

I proffer my inner forearm to her.

"You don't know what that means, do you?"

"No. Should I?" she asks with a heaved helping of derision in her voice. This is sounding like the old Kim. She was always shaken by anything that she couldn't do.

"It means something like 'A Lotus Blooms for my missing Love.' I composed it myself, with the help of Monty Fiske. He's a surprising poet." Her eyes widen like they're going to explode.

"Are you saying that you've been visiting that monster in jail without me? How could you, Ron?"

"Ok, this is going to take a lot of explaining because this tattoo is screaming that I'm right about what I've actually been for the last five years, and let me tell you, its been a hell of a lot less pleasant that being here with you."

"What are you talking about?"

I tell her everything that wasn't a danger to someone I knew. I tell her about Bonnie and Yori and Anne. I tell her about her brothers and Wade and the rebellion. I tell her about two long cold years in the wilds of Tibet and the high countries of the East. I even tell her about her death and that bastard James.

At the end of it, she just stares at me.

"We're going to see Professor Hurlbetter right now," she announces with more than a small edge of cold fear in her voice.

"I think I can be sick pretty good already KP…" I mutter helplessly as I'm dragged past the Mankey look-alike and down the hall.

* * *

Turns out that Hurlbetter is from whatever 'old country' seemed to produce the most boring people in the universe. At least that's the way it seems at this moment. He's been talking for the best part of twenty minutes without asking a single question and I've been staring around his office for most of that time.

It has sort of a 'log cabin wannabe' vibe to it, something that's only made worse by the presence of a stuffed moose head and a space that looks like its waiting for a rearing grizzly. I haven't been listening to his theories thus far so it doesn't seem worth starting now.

"Tell me, Professor, is there meant to be a bear stood in that space over there? You waiting on delivery or just for it to come back from the cleaners?"

Waiting for his incessant twaddle to round itself off seemed like a pointless exercise anyway. He sits there stunned for a few moments and then looks over his thick rimmed glasses at me, smiling.

"No, Ronald, as you know, that's where my coat stand used to be but you kept knocking into it. I had to put it behind the door. Have you actually been listening to a word I've said?"

"Not really, but I bet it boils down to stress from something, my guess being whatever exams I'm due for is causing my flimsy, addled brain to come up with an alternate history for me. The question that has to be asked, however, is how I managed to get a full arm tattoo without Kim noticing."

He stares at me stunned for a moment and then blinks as if he hadn't noticed the fact that one of my sleeves is gone and I have a crazy pattern of petals, words and dragons covering my entire upper arm and the inside of my forearm. He looks over at Kim who simply shakes her head.

"Are we sure that it's indelible. Have you tried alcohol?" he mutters helpfully, getting to his feet and walking across to his desk, pulling out a Dictaphone, a box of Kleenex and a bottle of what looks like deathly cheap bourbon. Soaking a wadded tissue in alcohol, he returns and rubs it over my skin, with no visible effect.

"It's not even a tattoo in the purest sense," I admit quietly, "its subcutaneous metal deposits sealed in with fine scar tissue."

"Like an etchasketch?" he's looking me straight in the eyes, trying to work out what I'm saying.

"A little bit. Maybe more like an implant than a tattoo."

"Where on earth did you get that, Ron?" cuts in KP, much to my discomfort. I've already told her and I'm guessing she didn't believe.

"That would be in Tokyo, during my time in the east."


	16. Chapter 15

The single best thing about this part of the world is the sunsets. There's nothing like mountain sunsets with the orange of the sky dancing across the purple and grey rock and the perpetual fine snowcover on the highest peaks. I've seen sunsets everywhere on this orb in my time as a globetrotter, watching the majority of them with Kim and the rest alone of with other friends.

I'm so caught up in the gentle folds of the sky and the streamers of cerise silver cloud running at odd angles around the mountains on the other side of the plateau that I don't even notice the 200lb black guy sitting down next to me.

A sticky, sweet smell catches my nostrils and drags me kicking and screaming back to the present. Looking down, there's a sticky rice cake under my nose, steam still rising from it. The huge brown paw that holds it belongs to Arahat, one of my teachers and something of a mystic.

Without even accepting it off him, I open my mouth and bite into the top of the tasty bundle of rice, wondering what I might find in the middle. Given that most of my teachers are renegade Buddhists, I'm expecting something vegetable. I'm pleasantly surprised to discover that the filling is actually made of traditional Tibetan mutton. A few moments later, I twig to something and look up.

Arahat is sitting next to me, in a strange garment that I'm still trying to codify. I know that it's something to do with being a basic garment and has a lot to do with the Buddhist rule about only owning three robes but it's still odd to look at. He has sort of loose pants and are covered in ties to bring them in when need be, a shirt and a poncho like coat that would look more in place on his much slighter companion Immortal. His nose carries a pair of glasses that sit there by means only of a clip and he's as bald as a newborn. This has a strong impact on his appearance, which to say the least is striking.

"This is mutton and you are a vegetarian," I announce without ceremony. There's a wicked smile on my face and a sort of look of triumph over his obvious spiritual superiority.

"Oh, great saints!" he declares quietly in mock despair, clapping a hand to his face, "I've broken a rule, whatever shall I do?" he looks at me with such a need for guidance that I don't know what to do but laugh.

"I don't know but I think we've just found the sound of one hand clapping."

"You're a dog, Ronald. And yes, this is meat. I didn't kill it though. And technically, I only obey those rules to keep up appearances, I'm actually enlightened; Karma doesn't stick to me and I'll never be reborn."

"So you have a get out of hell free card then?"

"Ron, I've got a long wait, then a ticket out of reality to pure parinirvana when my time is up. Hell doesn't even cover it."

I sit munching on my oriental excuse for a sandwich, wondering what the new day will bring and remember that I still have training to be done. In a scant few days, I'll be sent to Japan once again, into the industrial heartland of Drakken's new administration in search of a very special girl I haven't seen in far too long.

"She'll still be waiting and still in love with you in a few more days," cuts Arahat's deep, melodious voice through my thoughts. He smiles broadly and sort of taps the side of his nose.

"How do you know? I don't even know if I'll be able to control the blade any more."

"Those are two very different doubts, Ron. From the way you're thinking, you're more than she fell in love with in the first place and I can't see anything in your past that could have poisoned that. Distance and time make things different, true, but that's usually to the point where you won't live up to her memories. These days, you're just much more of you than most of us can handle. That's why Hsien is so hard on you at times, he sees too much of what he's lost in you."

"Lost? He ever had anything?"

"Gary had a wife and a daughter that he loved very much. They were changed by the moodulators and weren't the same people anymore. He mourned them and was forced to move on. Now all he has to call truly his own are himself and Windsinger. It isn't magical per se, but it comes damn close."

"Speaking of that sword, is it a lightsabre or something? He seems to draw it from no-where and never seems to wear a scabbard."

"No, it's just a regular sword. A Jian that he had specially made some time ago. He keeps it in a special scabbard upside down on his back under his robe. You can just about see the edge of the medallion at his right hip. The weapon is perfectly sized for his torso and has a sort of nub in it to hold onto a ballbearing in the scabbard. Simple but intimidating."

He had that right. I've never been so scared of anyone, armed or unarmed in my life, including my first encounter with Monkey Fist. Immortal is something else and he's more than earned his appellation in my eyes.

* * *

"The first principal of endeavour is what, Stoppable?" barks the voice of Master Hsien over the howling echoes of the wind. On this little circle of cleared dirt amongst the tumble in the lee of the valley face, his voice seems to boom through everything.

"Those who want the victory the most succeed!" I snap back. It sounds like corporate jargon and it probably is. He told me this eight weeks ago, before he broke my arm for the first time. If it weren't for that girl he keeps calling Saint, I'd still be in a cast.

For the first time in two months, I manage to avoid the blade. It seems to be moving in slow motion, which compared to some of the previous attacks, it may have been. A Jian is not like a Katana, it has a danging grace and little power to directly block. This one is so sharp that it's cut cleanly into my bones more times than I can count.

The air seems to be visible and moving around the blade and I feel rather like the lead character in the movie, the Network. I dip backwards out of it's reach and watch as the compression lines around the mildly shaking blade ripple as it passes my nose. The faint gasp of Saint on the sidelines comes through like she was underwater.

I spin and come into a defensive stance but the blade is gone again. I can't believe I dodged Windsinger. Immortal, however, seems unimpressed.

"When we first met, what was the first thing I said to you, Stoppable?"

"Defend yourself."

"Why was that, do you think?"

"Because you proceeded to beat the tar out of me, cut one of my tendons and knock out three of my teeth."

"Not in the slightest. I was testing to see how fast you would learn. You didn't defend yourself. It was like you were trying to stop me hurting others."

I'm just about to come back as that blade materialises again. In the half-light here, the thing flashes like a lightsabre, pure blue in the centre with a halo about it. I twist left and drop my stance to avoid the lightning thrust and feel the sting of the blade being slapped into my chin on the flat. Desperate, knowing that he's going to draw blood unless I show that I'm learning, I pull at every piece of training that he, Sensei, Monty and Arahat have given me in the last months.

Tapping into the edges of the power, I push off on my heels and feel my back spread lightly, coasting back on a draught. I slip out from under his blade like a leaf on the wind and hit an eddy, pulling myself to my feet like a feather in a gust.

"Impressive. Faster."

We begin a dance that would seem magical to anyone else and seemed magical to me because that's what it was. Training or not, gift or not, he's using every piece of magic he knew and I'm pulling power into myself from my Mystical Monkey Power, the wind around me, his actions, my karma; anything that I think I can get an advantage with.

We fly like hornets or butterflies, dancing like bladed leaves on the wind. I realise a little way into the fight that I have pulled a combat knife from my belt and I'm using it to halt the advances of his much more capable weapon.

I don't know how long we dance but we must have reached a significant altitude because when I'm eventually struck, oddly enough by a copy of Immortal, I plummet to the ground without grace. Despite a cracked rib, I manage to throw myself into a drift before his knee slams down into the space I occupied.

"Good, Stoppable. Saint, patch little boy blue up and send him to sensei when you're done," Immortal called before taking a single hop that carried him off into the darkness.

* * *

"How did you do that?" the youngish girl asks from behind her headscalf as she lays a pair of small, chocolate coloured hands onto my chest. Whatever power she has sets about knitting bones and putting me back together. That translucent glow dances through her hair and lights beneath her hands and her baby blue eyes light up as she smiles. I'm beginning to think that's a secret smile. Something she uses only for me.

"Asks the girl who's healing my boo-boo's with magical hands…"

"This is God handing me power to heal. He seems to think you're a worthy cause."

"God? You mean the Jewish one or the Christian one?"

"Both I guess. We're not sure if they're truly separate entities or just sides of a coin. Prophet says Yahweh is a bit of a grump and somewhat vengeful, Jehovah seems a bit withdrawn to me. The powers they grant use correspond nicely to the relevant halves of the bible, though."

"So she can call storms, part seas and turn folks into pillars of salt while you can? What, walk on water and cure the sick?" I'm not sure why I'm being sarcastic about this. Must be my mother's influence.

"What language are we speaking here, Ron?"

"What?"

"Since we got up here, I've healed only you and Fist and one of the novices. You've not been taught any languages since you got here."

"What are you talking about? Everyone here speaks English all the time."

"Nope, silly. Never read the Acts of the Apostles, did you? Most of them are speaking some brand of Chinese or Japanese or Korean. The only people who speak English all the time are myself and Arahat. Most of the time, you seem to be speaking Hebrew."

"What?"

"When I healed you, you caught the spirit, like it infected gentiles as Paul and Peter taught. You have the gift of tongues now, whether you like it or not. You're just not powerful enough to realise when it's working."

"You infected me with religion? That is just sick and wrong!"

"Booyah," she replies and slipped away from me, biting on her lower lip.

* * *

Training begins at sunrise. Most of the Buddhists seem to get up long before that, but Immortal doesn't and that's what dictates most of my time. I'm not sure why he's teaching me rather than Sensei and the ninja, but I think it has to do with the fact that he has powers that they do not. Knowing that I have another hour or more before sunrise, I find Hirotaka and challenge him to a little one on one sparring. He agrees.

All of his moves seem slow and I can't credit it. He's always seemed so fast before. After a few moves, I've knocked him on his back, hand drawn back to strike with an eagle's claw.

"How come you're holding back Hirotaka? This isn't like you," I ask quietly as I help him to his feet.

"I am sorry, Ronald-Sempai, I have no idea what you mean," comes the reply.

"Well you seem…wait a minute, since when have I been your sempai?" I demand. Sempai means sort of higher up the food chain, an address for team captains and upperclassmen.

"Have you any idea how that white devil fights? He moves faster than the eye can see and I don't mean that figuratively. You can hold your own against him for minutes at a time. I watched Sensei do not better."

"Sensei was defeated by Immortal?" I'm aghast.

"Some years ago, those men came to Yamanuchi and taught Sensei. We questioned their reasons but then Sensei offered to prove their abilities. He was mobbed by a dozen of the white man."

"A dozen? What, how?" it seemed unlikely that he had the powers of the Wegos.

"Have you heard the story of Monkey and his Journey to the West?"

After I admitted I had no idea what he was talking about, we sat on a rock and I listened as he told tale after tale about a monk, a magical monkey, a pig demon and a fish-man going to get scriptures from the Buddha. The monkey had all sorts of magics, including multiplication, flight and a mystical weapon. It was sounding more and more like mystical monkey power by the end.

* * *

"Now, we begin to teach you to attack."

Immortal's voice hammers around the landscape as if it were a cannon. Behind him is a wide selection of weapons that I had hoped we would never get to. Everything from nunchuks and swords to .50 cal. machine guns and missile launchers.

"You must know how best to attack with a weapon to know how best to foil it. This is one of the key principals of our art. You need to know how to hold the brush before you paint a stroke."

He's spoken like this to me before. Monty discarded most of it as impractical, as is his right, but it fascinated me. Immortal used a sword form that basically involved calligraphy with a sword. He said that all of the attacks used one emotion in particular, to match the symbol and one of the hardest to defend against was love. It was a complex symbol and an overwhelming emotion that came from every direction at once and changed your perception. Given the dizzying tempo with which he could wield Windsinger, it was hardly surprising.

"What do you mean, attack? Isn't that what we've been doing?"

"No, Stoppable, I've been pushing you harder than I would most opponents in order to teach you how to defend. You're actually starting to hold your own. But holding your own against superior force is not enough. You can disarm a situation with a few choice strikes by taking away their ability to fight."

He picked up something small, like the handle of a tennis racket. With a few twists that I didn't follow, a thin narrow blade telescoped out, forming what looked like a baby version of Windsinger.

"This is a training Jian. I will teach you speed and footing, the others will teach you the specifics of many weapons but the first things you must learn are the Jian and the Gun, for they are the original forms that the Lotus occupied. I'm guessing Hirotaka told you of Monkey, Sun Wukong, and his magical wishing staff. It could grow to any size he could imagine. You hold the same weapon. It's just that Monkey had a very small imagination, given that he wasn't human. You understand where this is going?"

"Are you saying that the Lotus blade is actually the mythical star iron wishing rod?"

"Precisely. Hell, mystical Monkey power is actually a side effect of the process used to bind Sun Wukong in the first place. Those four idols were made from the mystical jade that was used to make his chains under the mountain of the five elements. It was a result from people messing with stuff they didn't understand."

"So our powers come from the same source?"

"No, I cultivated mine myself. Yours are the residue of another powerful but unrefined being's cultivations. It'll be simpler to think of it like the force with an ego for now. One day, Arahat will teach you to talk to whatever part of Sun you inherited, but that is something for another day. Now," he said, "hit me!"

* * *

Author's Note: As warned, due to limits on my computer technology in coming weeks, updates may becoem a little patchier than they already are. In case anyone's interested, Arahats are Buddhist entitities, Immortals are Daoist and Saint is Christian. They are members of a group known as the Paragons and each represents a religion in earthly matters. They have gifts that make them powerful and they use them to protect those who don't believe. 


	17. Chapter 16

I can now honestly say that I hate Tokyo. Without reason or passion, I just despise it. The place seems to have no redeeming features, aside from the fact that their idea of healthy expression of sexual desire is to still not have sex but being open about watching it.

The 24-hour porn channel amused me the most, simply because it was live and they couldn't show penetration so they hand the camera man a piece of frosted glass on a stick. I've never seen anything like it and the way the girls squeek and scream as if they were being hurt is just downright disturbing. I know the cadence of Japanese gives them higher voices but still.

I'm starting to feel like a character from a Dick Tracy comic, standing in a rainy alley, waiting for a contact to take me to Yori. Right now I'm huddling in the shelter erected over a vending machine full of porn movies, comics and soiled panties. The mere thought of it makes me feel off. Not that people like these sorts of things but that there is actually an industry for soiled panties.

My hopes rise a little as a huddled figure comes up the alley towards me but that comes to nothing as he shiftily looks around and purchases a movie with a name something akin to 'backdoor assault sentai rangers' and a pair of pink panties.

I watch him go with a mixture of pity and distaste. He's almost definitely a virgin, despite what Yori once said about 'healthy expression of urges.'

I think one of the reasons for my distaste is that it really isn't any more healthy than the stuff that goes on in the states. Or did. Somehow, people still seem to be just as miserable over here as they ever were. Maybe the buildings interfere with the moodulator signals or something.

* * *

The little old man in front of me farts in a mild staccato as he leads me further up the stairs into the building. For all the high rises around here, this building is a squat little apartment block that looks like he owns it and really doesn't like the previous owner's décor. Compared to the shiny grimness of the centre of town, this place just screams 'poor economy,' having been built while Truman was in office.

The smell is like cracked nuts and cabbage, a combination that might have been tasty going in the other way but right now, the taste that's creeping down from my nose is tortuous.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to be doing here. Supposedly, this is the home of a recluse programmer named Kiyoko99, who would have a contact so that I could arrange to meet Yori. Right now, I'm trapped in the notion that I'm going to be meeting some kind of even more unhealthy Japanese Wade and this is going to turn into one of those adventures.

"You are here to meet our son, Gaijin?" came a hollow female voice from the top of the stairs. Looking past the smelly old dude, a short and unattractive Japanese woman of maybe fifty-five stood in what looked like half a kimono and a pair of sweats. Her head was topped by a checkered cloth and she had that unique squinting expression of old orientals.

"Master Lunch Lady?" I squawked in shock, an eyebrow almost leaving my face, "What are you doing here?"

"Not so bright, Stoppable-Chan," she replied condescendingly. I know that she's referring to me in the diminutive. I really don't care.

"Domo, Nooni-San."

She looks at me with a questioning look.

"Everything you said up to that sounded like good Japanese, then you miss pronounce the hell out of a basic phrase?"

"It's a long story. On the plus side, I'm now more than capable of eating your sushi. I'm supposed to be meeting a hacker of some sort so that sounds like hungry work…" I smile knowingly as I step past the old dude and into the apartment.

I've lived in some scabby places recently, including a tiny single room thing called a 'bed-sit' in London and a tent on top of a mountain in Tibet. I've camped in what could honestly be described as hell and I've kept a room so messy that my parents won't even enter it and Rufus is scared of the floor. One look at this apartment and the little guy and I share a glance and then both politely keep our deep revulsion hidden.

The sunken central section is well kept but the rest of the place is piled with materials that look like a vagrant's recycling project. The smell is fairly still, though a musty smell of old paper and rust makes breathing slightly uncomfortable. As I'm about to step up from the little section where you remove your shoes, a hand lands on my shoulder.

"Dive or not, Ronald, this is my house. Take your shoes off," growls Nooni's voice, full of threat. She's traditional so the lack of a suffix can be translated basically as 'I'm going to break you' in English.

I remove my trainers, feeling glad for that. I'm not used to them. A long time on a sharp pointy mountain wearing nothing but Tabi socks is very different to my old beat up Nikes.

"So where's your son then? I'm bound to get out of here as soon as possible. I've heard that someone with a grudge may be looking for me."

"Oh, he holds a grudge alright, Stoppable," came my reply, "in some way's you created him."

I raise my eyebrow and follow her gesture towards a small doorway a little way down a corridor. More of the apparently ubiquitous trash bundles make it feel cramped, especially with my oversized feet. It's not a unique door in any way, marked only by the fact that rather like Wade's room of old; it possesses a large sign in the middle, proclaiming loudly 'Go Away!' in no uncertain terms. The fact that it's written in the pejorative makes that even clearer. I'm starting to get the feeling that Saint's little gift has more to do with communicating meaning than it does in specifics because I keep finding myself wondering how I know things.

I've heard of Hikikomori before; shut-ins who abandon the competitive and falsehood filled mainstream of Japanese culture to hide in their rooms. Many of them, like Wade, are masters of computer technology and some of the greatest denizens of the worlds of Everlot and the like. Most of them also avoided chipping, based on the fact that they were mostly impotent in the real world.

Supposedly, Kiyoko99 was a computer genius that made Wade look like a kindergarten teacher and could master the web like nothing else. This being was not an agoraphobic but had withdrawn because of feelings of inadequacy compared to his only real sexual examples in the Japanese media. Something told me that that was the dark side of all their liberalness about the subject.

I knock gently on the door and stand in complete silence for a few moments. A gruff but strangely wrong voice, like someone trying to be something they are not hung through the door after a moment.

"Leave me alone Mother. Put any food you have on the floor outside the door and yell when you're clear."

"Gimme a break, you whiny little computer Biotch!" I've not even met the dude yet and I'm losing patience, "If Wade can shake his agoraphobia, you can put up with meeting the guy you invited here."

"Is that you, Stoppable-San?" comes a higher and softer voice a moment later. I squint for a second, wondering where I've heard that voice before.

"I sure hope so. Now, am I gonna have to kick the door down? None of the guys who can will teach me how to actually walk through walls yet. Well, apart from paper ones…" I feel a slight smile break my skin for the first time since I came to this odd little island again. I can also feel something similar occurring on the other side of door, as the handle turns and it creaks inwards.

The next moment is insane from my point of view, like those moments where you completely lose yourself in the motions of a floating plastic bag or the like. I think of Bonnie as a flower in the muck but Yori has become something else.

Through isolation and hiding, she has grown less lithe, more filled and somewhat harder. As she shelters her eyes from the grown light of the corridor, her tatty, frazzled hair pulled back into a ponytail and a braid around the front, her beautiful almond eyes shine at me. I see anger and joy in equal measure shift through them for a moment and watch as every muscle in her body fights for permission to either hug me or strike me. In typical Japanese restraint, however, she stiffens and simply smiles falsely.

"Oh Stoppable-San and his American style jokes," she mutters with tears welling in her beautiful almost yellow peepers.

I'm the one that acts on what we're both feeling, thanks in part to Immortal and his insistence that emotions are there because we're too stupid not to need them. I sweep her into my arms, starting just beneath her unwilling hands and run my hands up to encircle her back. She responds, grabbing onto me like I was her last chance in a raging ocean and our heads close so that our cheeks are touching.

"Oh, Yori, I've missed you so much…" I whisper, enjoying the feeling of gooseflesh rising on her neck beneath my words.

We break the hug and I look into her eyes, not realising until too late as they harden and a fist draws back. For some reason, I make no attempt to block, sensing that the potentially deadly punch is to become something else. Her hand thunders into my cheek with a force of conviction I've not felt before, a slap worthy of the most jilted of lovers. She hits me again as I stand and her blows become lighter with each stroke as she dissolves gently into tears, still slapping my chest, the thumping noises barely covering up her sobs.

* * *

Author's Note: I really like this Chapter, though it's partly a rant that follows the 'Japan is not THAT cool' line that I've been known to follow in recent years... 


	18. Chapter 17

Hurlbetter looked up as I fell silent. Mystically charged martial artist I may be, but that has nothing on the glare of a woman who's finding out that the man she's supposed to be marrying spent time in places she didn't know about, with people who are supposedly married and refers to her biggest dislike as 'my flower in the muck.'

Kim's gaze could have stripped paint at that point. She's cute when she's angry but jealousy is not a good look for her. To make matters worse, insane, unbalanced distaste for half of the characters in my short little story seems to have become the order of the day.

"Yori is married to Hirotaka," she said in a voice lined with thick, boiling rage, "why would she be pretending to be a shut-in? And why when the hell were you in Tibet anyway? That's a no go area because of the problems we had with the Chinese government."

"I was in Tibet after we got chased out of Yamanuchi by a large number of Diablo robots with a hell of a lot of support. That was about two years after your death as I remember it. It was the cold hard truth for me until this morning, which was badical by the way."

She stared at me for a moment. Then a familiar old gaming console is pulled from a pants pocket and pointed at my head.

"Wade, I need a full scan on Ron, there's something not right. He woke up this morning, surprised that I was alive and apparently has been running around the world in his sleep."

"What?" asked a surprised voice that seemed much more like the ten year old Wade of old than the Wade I was used to.

"Just run the scan, Wade," I piped up. This was getting weird, "and tell me, did you ever meet that girl from Amerillo you were talking to?"

"What? How did you know that?"

"That would be because you told me. Some time ago in fact. While we were negotiating with Rhodigan Industries for their help, if memory serves."

"Ok, either he's psychic and crazy or some major science is going on," the voice from the Kimmunicator chirped as a blue scanning beam shot out of the device.

Kim stood glaring at the device for some time after Wade signed off with an "It'll take a little time to go over the data."

"So, Ron, why don't you continue with the story," Hurlbetter asked quietly, gesturing to the tape recorder. It's funny but there seems to be something odd about that thing.

"What do you want to know? And bear in mind, I'm not giving you anything that might endanger my friends."

"I'd like to hear more about this training you've apparently had." Kim's voice sounded rather demanding at that point and there seemed to be disdain heaped in there too. "Last time I checked, you were barely able to keep up with me."

"Oh, off hand, I reckon I could beat a dozen of you, beautiful," I smile as the words come out. Never thought I'd ever get the chance.

* * *

Author's Note: I'm struggling with proof-reading issues at the moment. Not good at spotting my own mistakes. If there is a kind soul out there who has a little time on their hands, offers would be appreciated. Luckily, I'm not prone to writing epic chapters. 


	19. Chapter 18

"I'm guessing you just found out about the Mystical Monkey deal, eh?"

It irritates me that it's physically impossible to stay mad at Arahat. Like most of the paragons, he's a good person, but there's something more, much more than that to it.

"Why can't I stay mad at you?" I demanded, not answering his question. His grin redoubled as he moved to sit next to me.

"It's because I love you Ronald. More than you could ever know."

My head snaps around to look at him in disbelief. Then I realise that he's setting me up to think like that. Why sit next to someone unless it's so they can't see your eyes.

"Come again? I know there's something more specific than that."

"First thing that one must do to attain enlightenment is to get rid of the need to cling to things that change. Learning to love yourself and everything around you equally and regardless of change is one of the key steps to that. Hence, I love you deeply and unconditionally, as I love everyone else here and myself."

"Why does that make it hard to stay mad?"

"You've been in love, Ron, you figure it out."

We sat in silence as I mulled this over. It had some odd repercussions. I never held grudges until Kim died and the only one I have ever successfully held onto is towards Shego for defacing the grave. And that's only mild at best. I'd be satisfied with an apology. Do I love them? Certainly I thought I loved Kim and I never held a grudge against her, not even the Mankey thing. I didn't hold her risking her life for a stupid crush while I risked mine for her against her. Why?

I used to think it was because I was stupid. I was in love. Which is similar but apparently worlds apart.

Still, when has what Arahat said been true? When have I forgiven people because they love me unconditionally? My parents for their misdeeds and even Wannaweep.

And Kim.

It always comes back to Kim.

"I don't get it."

"What don't you get?" he's smiling serenely as if he can see my thoughts and knows the roads I've taken.

"I loved Kim deeply and I always forgave her. Hell, I didn't bat an eyelid about nine hours in a janitor's closet while she danced with Mankey…I had Rufus, my pet rat, trash the lock so I could get out. It never felt like a two way street. It could take her days to actually forgive me for things. She would hold grudges for weeks. Nothing I ever did seemed to be good enough unless I got hurt in the process, then she was all sweetness and light.

"I guess I'm asking how this applies to me really." It's hard to admit doubts. Always hard.

"I hate to break this to you, Ronald, but I think the girl loved you. While Immortal could probably say it better, hell, you should've seen how he trained his son before the chipping, I think she loved you, she just didn't have a good reason to be attracted to you."

"What?"

"Attraction isn't a choice. For guys, it's usually about physical appearance, but for girls, it's about being with the dominant male. That's basic psychology. There isn't anything in this world that can change that. Love is something else, something other than lust, something other than attraction. People can have this in them without understanding what it is because it makes sense only in a context, like most things.

"In some ways, Ron, she may have loved you more than you can imagine."

"It never seemed that way though," I sighed then. Years of suppressed grief is welling to the surface. I try desperately to push it back.

"I've heard about something that happened with Moodulators a while before she died. You know how a moodulator works, right?"

"Yeah, it synthesises an emotional response and then chooses a target at random. Kim explained this to me after talking to that Bortle guy after the incident."

"I think she was embarrassed, Ron, because that's a lie."

"What?"

He just nodded for a second and we sat in silence.

"You're not just going to leave that hanging!" comes a voice from the other side of me to Arahat. Immortal is sat on my left now.

"I guess you're right, Hsien. Ron, a moodulator synthesises an emotion by tricking the brain into thinking it's getting the correct chemical triggers. It doesn't choose a target, that's pretty much impossible. What it does is trigger the body to become sensitive to things. When you're in love or attracted to someone, you release pheromones which trigger responses. She started giving the things out and your body responded the strongest because of how you felt about her. Mix a strong undirected feeling of love with attraction to you and the fact that your body is screaming yes on all channels, you have a lovesick crazy on your hands."

"It's my fault that she chased me?"

"Yep, you're such a sexy beast, Ron," replied Immortal, "we can both see you're feeling a lot of grief at the moment. Don't fight it. Feel it and stay open. Inhabit your whole body and work through it; we know you can do that without it consuming you. We'll be here if you need us, but I think you can get to the patina of emotions that lie beyond that barrier."

"You want me to grieve for Kim again?"

"No, Ron. I want you to actually grieve this time. Last time you found yourself in a million places where the greater good took over. You closed down that part of yourself to get through it. We need the whole of you to make this fight work."

And with that, two of the wisest men on the planet left me to sit and grieve over old hurts. And I did.

* * *

"What is it Stoppable-San?" begged the deep sonorous rumble of Sensei. To this day I never did find out the old man's name but as I sit before him in his little private cave in the midst of our tent village it does not matter.

"Master, I have questions that I do not feel right to bring before Masters Arahat and Immortal. I cannot complete a task they gave me and I feel ashamed," I hung my head, "I am not strong enough alone."

He regarded me silently from his meditation cushion for a moment, staring at my limp shoulders and hung head. At no point did I see his eyes within those deep, wrinkled sockets. Eventually, he gestured towards another cushion across from him.

"There is nothing I can say if I do not know what task they gave you, but it seems that you do not truly know either. Perhaps that is why you are lost. Sit and calm your mind, then explain to me what you need of me."

I sit down onto the hard cushion on the hard floor and adopt the lotus wide. I'm not in the least bit clear as to what he is getting at. I know what my problem is; I'm not strong enough to push past the grief I feel over Kim's death. Still, I humour him, going through some of the basic lessons I fell asleep in during my time at Yamanuchi in sophomore year.

I bring my breathing under control and I focus on that simple rhythm. I vary it slightly as Immortal taught, drawing different amounts of air in with each turn, trying to find the limits of my lungs. I let it settle into a comfortable draw and focus piece by piece on my extremities, relaxing them and bringing them under my control. With each breath, I feel the flows of energy through my body, things that have a thousand different names I never bothered to learn. I begin to seek my centre, letting the core of my sensitivity sink down to a point beneath my navel and then let it spread to the very limits of myself. I let my entire body breath with each intake, the flows of chi moving freely.

I feel a knot in myself. Realising the tension, I seek for the source, arriving at the meridian above my heart. The flow is obstructed here and that means that I've been lying. I haven't been lying to anyone. Needing to know what this is about, I begin to force energy into the channel with greater and greater conviction. I feel the flow halt, build pressure and finally give. A rush of emotions I never felt before rise to the surface.

And I finally understand.

* * *

Author's Note: Double chapter day! God, I feel like Zaratan when I say crap like that. The mysticism steps up a notch. Won't complain about the writing difficulties I'm having with chapters 27 and the like, lest I give spoilers! 


	20. Chapter 19

Despite my best hopes, the afternoon with Hurlbetter were not the finest hours of my life. Kim kept insisting that I go over my Yori 'fantasies,' something that I've been uncomfortable thinking about, let alone putting into words since the day we parted.

She also kept making demand to know if I was cheating on her with Bonnie, something that I would never dream of doing. That's in hindsight and reassessment, however, because the facts of my life are that KP has been dead for 5 years and I've been with either Bonnie or Yori for much of that time.

* * *

Sleep isn't coming easily to me tonight. The bed's too soft and I'm not used to sleeping above ground. There's something in the fact that there's too much light and not enough of it to equate to my little locker back home. I begin to turn over the events of the day as I lie beside my angry angel who seems to be keeping her protest up in her sleep, curled into a foetal position and kicking out when I touch her. That wouldn't be an issue, were it not for the desire I have to stroke her hair now that she's not snarling at me and the fact that she's got some leverage on the mattress that I haven't worked out yet.

The last time she bucked, I'd brushed her spine accidentally with my fingers and she ended up occupying my half of the bed and I was on the floor elsewhere. If she does this a lot, I'm confused as to how I'm not dead.

Today was dizzying to say the least, with visits to Monique, Felix and Felix's long term girlfriend Belinda. She thinks she's a psychic and goes out to prove it with a solid knowledge of NLP and a knack for truisms and platitudes. Reading the situation here, she has Kim convinced, with something to do with a dream hybridizing machine and Felix and Monique are at it like proverbial rabbits. I don't think Belinda is any more the wiser than I was, though I get the feeling that this isn't news to Kim. Monique would never keep this one completely under wraps.

The worst part of the evening was while we were eating at Bueno Nacho, oh how I savoured that food…when she took me aside and tried to 'help' by delving into my mind.

* * *

"I'm feeling a lot of confusion in you," she began. I sighed inwardly. That's got to be the standard opener for every act like this in the world.

"I wake up one morning feeling like I've made a _Quantum Leap_ and I'm stuck in a life that is not my own. Yeah, I'm confused."

"I can see a green sentinel standing over you, part of you but yet not."

Oh brother. This one is going to be about how Kim is my soul mate, yadda yadda yadda.

"Really?" I ask, trying my best to look incredulous and not laugh.

"Yes and that strong presence will guide you through your ordeal…"

"Congratulations, that was a successful palm reading. Now, if you're really psychic, can you tell be why my ability to astral project is limited to within a one mile radius of the university and why everyone's minds are so quiet?"

"What?"

"Off hand, either you didn't notice or you can't project. Next question, how long have you known me?"

"About two and a half years, since you came to this university."

"Wait, what? How long ago was the Diablo fiasco?" I demand, not having thought to look at a date in all the time I've been here.

"A little over four years ago now. Maybe four and a half. Why?"

"I'm trying to see if my dates match up to yours," I said through the fingers of the hand that was propping up my head, "there was a famine in Africa about 3 years ago?"

"Yes, you and Kim were on the rescue relief force. What are you getting at?"

"It was caused by Muslim tribesmen burning crops to drive out the blacks, right?"

"No, a civil war between a corrupt government and some equally corrupt rebels. Wait, what are you on about?"

"I served as a mercenary during that conflict. It was a horrible time but it was a learning experience. And before you ask, I killed all manner of people, I was just there to protect Isreali interests."

I left her in stunned silence, the look in her big brown eyes looking like a giant blue computer screen reading 'does not compute.'

* * *

I sit up in bed, trying not to make my weight shift too much, pulling my knees up to my chest. I sit there for a moment, watching her sleep and feel like I'm stealing part of someone else's life. She's so beautiful but this isn't my world, isn't my Kim. She loves some other guy, some perfect me, though I keep getting the feeling that he doesn't know anything about the powers he actually has.

Powers.

That's something that's been troubling me about this whole thing. Though I wasn't being subtle with my powers, everyone around reacted as if I was actually doing something that threatened them. As I thought earlier, they should be pretty much used to having freaks show up, even if Shego and Drakken are apparently married and hiding in Australia, Monkey Fist is missing presumed absent and DNAmy hasn't been seen in years. You'd think that costumed freaks were common but apparently, Kim's main foes now are a group called Easter Jihad and some martial artist woman.

With a heavy heart, I brush the backs of my fingers down the hair on the side of her face. She smiles faintly at first, then sours a little and kicks a little. I twist my legs free from the blankets and lower them to the floor, finding it odd that the normal creaks and complaints that I get from the damn things most mornings are silent for now.

I pad gently into the hall and down into the common room, assuming that it will be clear at this time of night. I'm half right. There's a drunk looking couple keeled over on the couch at one end, him beneath and her kind of curled up on his chest. I smile sadly, remembering when Kim used to sleep like that with me after a mission. How I must have seemed like a harmless, androgynous thing to her back then…

Not even giving a thought to the fact that I am, in honestly, completely naked and interestingly scarred in a way that I never was when I was just a sidekick, I make myself comfortable on the table, loosening muscles and setting myself up to reach out with my mind once again.

Starting with a few of Immortal's visualisations, I perform the entirety of the kata _storming the castle_ in silent fluidity, then begin to free up my chakra points, trying to get back to the moment rather than the constant revere that being with Kim again has thrown me into. I open up every channel and experience.

The shallow breathing of the guy on the sofa, the faint hum of the transformer in the TV, the fact that the girl is currently sitting on a chair beside the table, looking at my penis. All of these are true in the moment.

I reach a little further and a little deeper.

I can smell the pheromones coming from the girl. She's in her pre menstrual cycle and her emotions are sharp, almost tangy. There's a good deal of lust going there, even if mine is not a huge member of the team. Bonnie's argument has always been 'the stroker not the poker' but I still haven't completely shaken that feeling that I'm kinda small. Ever since Saint asked where the rest of it was. I know she was talking about foreskin now but still took me aback.

I decide to push to the levels that Arahat spent his life living amongst before I begin to expand my sphere; I push into the point where I can sense each occurrence that shape reality around us. The very movements of the air around me that brought those pheromones to my nose. A sub-harmonic vibration in the plaster of one of the walls that was slowly working a flake of dust free from the wall. The very thoughts going through my head and those of the girl beside me. On the edge of this, I could feel the cascade of dream consciousness that was going on within her lover.

I push outwards, allowing the whole world to exist within me. I removed many of the barriers of self that made up my identity and experienced everything within a quarter mile. Some of the highlights include a couple making love two floors down, Kim stirring slightly and a cascade of emotions going through her sleeping mind as her arm fails to find me, Monique dreaming about Felix and Belinda Brockmeir entering the room behind me.

I open my eyes, knowing full well there is a short brunette sitting in front of me, biting her lip and examining the goods. I slowly move my hand out and tip her face upwards. She has a nice pair of peepers, but I feel she ought to go back to where she belongs.

I simply flick my head towards the boyfriend and she's away, settling back down and giving me one last look before closing her eyes.

Finally, I turn my head to look at Belinda, who's stood there with her eyes wide like she's seeing a ghost. Right now, I'm not sure if she's staring at the muscles of my back, the scars or possibly my ass crack. Then again, she may just be taken aback by my behaviour.

"Is there something I can do for you, Belinda," I ask finally, pulling my left leg loose from the slight discomfort it was enduring. She seems rocked back on her heels and her brown eyes are the size of dinner plates.

"Ron, were you just…with that girl and…" she splutters.

"Maybe I was, maybe I wasn't. What would the real Ron Stoppable do?" it seems like a funny question but I'm actually deadly serious.

"He would still be in bed with Kim, not sitting in here naked. I thought you slept in shorts?"

"Heavens no. Didn't seem much point in that sort of thing after I got so used to sleeping in full kit. And I'd still be lying next to Kim if she wasn't freezing me out."

"Freezing you out?"

"Have you ever tried sleeping with someone who goes fetal in the middle of the bed and lashes out with her strength? It isn't pretty."

"So you came out here _Naked?_" she demanded as if I was doing any harm by it. Anyone who hasn't seen what I'm packing or better should probably spend some time elsewhere. Like one of the seedier places in town.

"I've done no harm, save amusing a drunken girl some."

"You knew she was there?"

"Yes. I heard her moving, I smelled perfume, alcohol and pheromones and I noted the way the table gave slightly as she leaned on it. It really wasn't hard and I had my mind on other things. I sensed things. For instance, and I'd love to know if you can help me with this, there are eighteen synthodrones and one thousand and ninety four surveillance devices in this building, all of which seem to be pointing at me when I'm close. Why?"

"How…"

"I can hear the buzzing noise that they make as the cameras turn towards me and I can feel the suspicion in you each time you're near one. So I'm assuming that you're aware of most of them. Plus, you smell of syntho-gel. You're either a clone or have been in very intimate contact with one. Answers. now Belinda!"

"Or what, Stoppable?" her voice suddenly turning cold, "you'll tell your precious Kim that one of her best friends is a synthetic? Give me a break!" at that point she begins to sneer violently at me, "and you won't try anything aggressive because I know you're unarmed and you never were much of an unarmed fighter. You still can't beat Kim."

"I'm more than capable of ripping your arm off and towel-whipping you to shreds, goo girl!" my ire is rising to the point where I'm about to put money where my mouth it.

"Ron!"

At the scream, we both turn our heads to look at the source. It turns out I've gotten up from the table and am standing in all my glory about five feet from Belinda. Kim is stood in her pyjamas and does not look pleased. In point of fact, she looks betrayed and close to tears.

"How could you?" she demands quietly as she turns and begins staggering away. She comes to a halt as I start laughing, loudly. After a moment, I get a hold of myself.

"You honestly think that I'm hitting on goo-girl here?" I mutter between cracks. She begins walking again.

I'm left alone with Belinda and the now awake couple.

"Goo-girl is a type of porn actress, dude," adds the guy, helpfully.

* * *

Author's Note: If you're reading this Cloudmonet, I really like your work. Anyone who want to know what Belinda is supposed to be like, check out his stuff on his homepage. 


	21. Chapter 20

I stand for moment after moment in horrified disbelief. Before going to Yamanuchi, I worked as a mercenary for a time and I did some terrible things but nothing like this before. The sound of my heart and the shattered sobs of Yori form a terrible serenade that chills me to the bone.

Fukushima was my enemy but that is not why I killed him. I would have been happy to wound his pride and send him away again. No, I killed him for his crimes. Crimes against Yori.

I know she will never forgive me for this act and somehow, that seems fitting.

He took her virginity by force, something she had wished to save for me. I cannot think of a single thing that I can say to her now. I feel so dirty that she would surely shrink from my touch.

So I stand, on this lonely Tokyo tower, wondering what I could have done differently, feeling the slack weight of the Lotus blade in my grip for the first time in four years, ashamed.

I begin to turn over the events leading to this moment, though I didn't really experience them, the whole thing was like a determined autopilot of rage.

* * *

I have no idea how I managed to get so distracted but I had been with Yori in some god-awful karaoke place for most of the night. I spent the evening trying patiently to explain why I was singing so badly. The gift of tongues (or curse as it felt sometimes) was something that had stuck to me after I was healed by Saint for the umpteenth time. It seemed bon-diggety at the time but then I realised that it just gave me the meaning and the ability to communicate, not the actual ability to speak the language.

Not a huge problem you say. Generally, no, but when trying to read Japanese characters on a screen and instead seeing words in English, you end up singing in English, which they hear as Japanese. Japanese I might add, that has little relation to the actual lyrics and none whatsoever to the tune being played.

She spent the whole time laughing, though I'm not sure if she really understood the where and the why of it. She may have thought it was charming or something but I really have no idea. I let myself get nervous and receded back into my head, not feeling the moment. Not feeling her.

In the end, we staggered out of the club with no more magical weaponry in my possession than I started with and a skin full of sake powerful enough to strip paint. Moonshine in the mercenary camps had been better tasting, if not as pretty. At times I almost find myself missing that stuff. Spitting out half of each mouthful to clean your weapon is an odd habit but it certainly killed some of the hangover. My the hangovers.

We began hobbling drunkenly in each other's arms through the well lit main streets and larger alleys and I felt happy. It didn't matter to me that there was something wrong, I was with a girl I adored and who adored me. No, scratch that, Yori had become a woman, a fine bloom, her big beautiful eyes looking at me with hope and a smile that could have fed an army.

We hugged and we stumbled past one of the vending machines that I thought were so odd and she started giggling. We stood for about ten whole minutes discussing the merits of certain things and the whole shebang ended in me pulling a few Yen from my pocket and buying a pair of white panties in her size. Before you wonder, I didn't go sniffing the things.

She held onto them like a knight who had received his lady's favour and we continued our stumbling.

We only made it a few more steps.

* * *

"So nice to see you again, Outsider!" echoed a hollow voice from behind me.

I turned to look at our assailant and almost laughed at the Japanimation clichés that were being bandied around here. Stood silhouetted in the half light of the dull sodium glow of the light over the vending machine was a Ninja. Not a normal ninja, mind you. A cliché movie ninja, wearing armour formed around his muscles, abs pressing out from the damn thing.

He was carrying what looked like a pair of swords, a kusari-gama and one of those claw-chain things that Yori uses. The hood seemed completely pointless, given that the half whiney voice was impossible not to recognise, though hood he had, shrouding his dark eyes. The thing seemed to be made of armour as well, though I couldn't work our quite why.

"Fukushima!" I bellowed drunkenly, thinking that there was no way I could fight him in my state, "how the Devil are you?!!"

"I will be much better, Outsider, once I have my prize in hand."

"Well, we don't have the Lotus blade with us and I have no idea where it is, and Yori doesn't remember. So how about you go an' take a jump, eh?"

I begin to turn around at this point but the knowing tone in his voice had me turned around rather fast.

"You may not know where the Lotus is, fool, but I do, and she does. And I never said my prize was the Lotus blade, anyway."

Realisation began to dawn as I took the threat for what it was and dropped into a crude, addled stance. I felt like I was being dashed on the rocks a moment later, bruises forming faster than I could see and a half dozen needles, with toxins coating each, were stuck into various parts of my body. For a moment I wavered, then collapsed, in time to hear Yori's scream and Fukushima's laughter as he carried her off into the night.

* * *

Sat in a puddle of my own vomit, I tried to find my centre but the phrase seemed completely hollow at the moment. I knew exactly what he had hit me with and at the dosage involved, I should have been dead about nine hundred times over. My body was stiffening and relaxing in waves as the Purple Yin ran through my blood, freezing organs willy nilly. This was not the wonderful night I had hoped for.

Gritting my teeth, I hauled myself onto my feet and stepped out into the rain, letting it cleanse some of the filth from me. I was lucky on two counts. One, purple yin reacts badly with alcohol. The two things mixed forming a semi-toxic compound that at least wasn't a neuro-inhibiter like the poison itself. Two, my body was so hopped up on Saint's healing powers, Sun Wukong's magics and complex trainings that it wasn't really a normal human body any more. I was pretty sure that I was basically digesting half of the toxin that made it into my bloodstream.

I began limping, picking up speed as the poison broke down and I got better control of my body. I felt like one big cramp but I wasn't going to leave Yori in that monster's hands if I could help it. I began to run and found myself slamming through Nooni's door without any ceremony or knocking.

* * *

"Stoppable-San, where is Yori?" Nooni began demanding almost before I hit the floor. She kept repeating this, growing more and more frantic as I stormed into Yori's room and began to strip my clothing and the numerous pins from my body. There was a great need in me, a need to quell this before it begins. I had no idea how long it took to recover from that poison but there was no way that I could have successfully tracked them in the rain and there was no way I could have won the fight poisoned and unarmed anyway.

My equipment is somewhat changed, mostly by needs. I began pulling on my ninja costume before I realised something. Sensei had once said that soldiers are uniform, warriors are unique. I was going to need an edge, something familiar. To this end I pulled out a pair of cargo pants and pulled them on, securing my belt tightly. I pulled on a pair of tabi, ninja socks and bound the trouser legs into them. Next came a black clinging t-shirt with long sleeves that I pushed up to the elbows. I was going to do this old-school. I dug through some of the stuff that Immortal had forced me to accept. He apparently had a thing for weapons, given that he had researched my past and had a number of things built specially, including weapons that looked like something out of the Fearless Ferret, right down to the claw gauntlets and grappling systems.

The left arm guard, however, was something that I had never expected. It seemed to have a miniature pump action shotgun built into it. In truth, it did. Nothing fancy like Wade would have come up with, nothing high tech, just a special motion with the hand to fire it and a pump on the side. It used a fairly rare type of ammo but otherwise was a solid investment.

To this lot, I added the composite plate armour that he had had made for me and a scabbard containing a Jian. It wasn't my immediate weapon of choice but it certainly did the job.

I ran out of the room and looked straight at Nooni who seemingly hadn't moved in the last twenty minutes. She just stared at me as if I was piloting some giant mech.

"I need incense," I announced finally. I couldn't believe that I was planning to have a crack at an astral projection but needs must.

"Here," she replied after a few moments, returning from a small shrine in the corner of the room. I simply sat down and lit it, dumping it onto a crushed can from one of her piles. I focused on Yori, the smell of her hair, the look in her eyes, seeking her emotions and flavour. Thinking so hard about her made much of my blood move around differently but I was forced to keep concentrating. Eventually, I had a flash.

"Where around here is there a really big neon sign with a palm tree in it?"

"There is a large club on the south side of the docks. It has a palm tree sign."

"Thank you. I'll bring her back. Alive."

I paced over to the window and stepped out onto the Brooklyn style fire escape. Old-school.

* * *

It's funny how fast one can travel over rooftops. Jumping requires surprisingly little energy compared to running flat out and you can take these little breathers as you recover your balance. You never meet anyone up there either. Well, occasionally you do, but last I checked street-running had gone the way of bars and violent video games in the last few years. Adrenaline had become passé in the last few years.

I descended down the slant of a warehouse roof and took a moment. There were a pair of guys stood outside a small shack on the roof of the building next to the club. They were dressed like mercenary ninja wannabes with too much armour and a lot of attitude; there with their submachine guns.

Master Immortal had been going on and on about something that I didn't really get. He kept saying, "a poor craftsman may blame his tools, but what if he's right?" I really didn't understand this until Sensei posed the question, 'Just because you are capable of composing a symphony on a broken instrument, does that mean you should? Is it not arrogance to assume that you have that much skill?"

What they were getting at was being prepared. Well equipped and weighed down were two different things however and most of what they had given me was multifunction. The stuff strapped to the outside of the armour was a sign of that.

I slipped onto the roof and stuck one of them with a throwing stake. The things are heave and they are killing or disabling weapons. I'd feel guilty but frankly, if they work for either the Yakuza or Fukushima, they probably had it coming. The second one wheels around in panic at the meaty thump from the direction of his friend and damn near gets a shot off before my foot connects, sending him flying from the roof. Only after he's fallen do I realise that there must be a forty foot distance between us and the edge of the roof.

The door was little more than a roof access. Thinking on my feet, I decided to ignore the floor route and scamper across the upper surfaces of the corridors and stairwells. For anyone who didn't have the spirit of a mystical immortal monkey in their brain, this may have proven something of a challenge. Arahat still hasn't taught me how to tap into it fully, though this really isn't the time to be concerned with such things.

Slinking along the roof I began to catch the sounds of screaming and begging from further into the compound. Either that wasn't Yori or they had found something that was capable of scaring her. I prayed that I was about to save some damsel in distress as collateral damage of Yori's rescue but I didn't have the heart to hold out any hope.

I began to hunt by sound, seeking the nexus of each echo as they reverberated around the corridors of what looked like a warehouse from the outside. It was obviously either a Yakuza building or a now abandoned villain lair. Probably both at some point, I reflected. Try as I might, I couldn't get my heart chakra to open properly. The lotus just wasn't willing to bloom today, it seemed.

* * *

I found him stood over Yori, her clothing in tatters, his partially discarded. It seemed for all the world that he's already had his fun. I watched for a moment, trying to think of a way of dealing with this without hurting her. My anger wouldn't help in this situation but I needed to be fully aware of everything so I let it flow. At that moment, my heat broke like a dam and I could feel the world in perfect detail. Muscles relaxed as I realised something that I never had before, a glowing neon sign inside of Yori. She has swallowed the lotus blade.

Silently I slipped down into the room proper, watching with boiling rage as he advanced on her once again. It seems that his objective was to ruin her, not to kill me; that was just a bonus. Yori's superior senses flickered up to see me and I shock my hair carefully. _Kiss him_, I mouthed, hoping that she could forgive me for what I was about to do.

I could feel the blade and I could feel another thing; it wasn't whole. At least not in the way that I had thought of it as whole the last time I saw the weapon. It was like she had swallowed sand. Very carefully shaped sand intended to stick to her stomach lining. Willing it free, I felt it begin to move and saw the faint glint of panic in her eyes. I can't really imagine what it must have felt like with fine barbed grains rolling up her throat.

I imagine praying that I knew what I was doing, as Fukushima reached down for her shoulders, Yori lunged forward, catching him in a kiss of such force that it surprised even me. His eyes widened in panic as he felt the flow of material into his mouth.

He must have felt like she was vomiting down his throat.

Then all at once, it came to a halt.

He stood looking terrified and sullied for a moment, until I placed my hand on his shoulder. I wheeled his body around and slammed an open palm into his belly, flinging him across the room. He hit the wall hard and slid down.

"Stoppable-San, what took you so long? And why the fuck did you make me kiss this…monster?" Yori demanded beside me. I wasn't really listening, though she was leaving a very great impression on my mind.

"You had the drop on me outsider, but I'll not be defeated that easily," declared Fukushima, trying to rise to his feet. I felt through the blade so much going on in his mind. He was planning to use more poison and questioning why I wasn't already dead a dozen times over.

"Stay calm, Sparky. I'm not going to fight you. That seems fairly obsolete right now, anyway. You have the Lotus blade."

"What?"

"Yes, you just swallowed it," I replied smiling humourlessly, "and the best part is that it's letting me see into your mind; Letting me see much of your past and your guilt. Lets see what you make of some of your crimes shall we?"

"I don't know what you mean," he responded, confused and desperate.

"I'm going to let your mind list your sins and put you through an appropriate punishment, Fukushima. Let's see you get out of this one!"

He began screaming as the word 'Rape' pressed its way through his skin on his forehead. It was made of metal so fine that it lacked any colour but black and was spelt in the most exquisite Japanese calligraphy.

He dropped to his knees, howling in terror as the words, "abuse of trust" pressed their way free of his chest, smashing free from his armour, scribed in classical Latin. As he began to sprout the word 'Murder' in dozens of languages, I turned to Yori, finding her watching in horrified fascination.

"I think it best if you turn away, Yori. It looks like he's going to kill himself with this."

She looked at me with anger flaring in her almond eyes.

"Of course he's going to die! You're killing him!"

"No, I turned the direct control of the blade over to part of his mind. This is him. His pain is fuelling him to think of more crimes. It's only going to get worse."

"You knew this would happen!"

"I felt it to be a distinct possibility, but I didn't know."

We stood in silence as the fest of the blade tore itself free, listing sins that translate best as 'pride, arrogance and curiosity,' the latter making me think that he had either practiced his ninja-ness in Yamanuchi's changing rooms or more likely, was gay and feeling guilty about it.

* * *

Yori and I part company after a few hours. She hasn't spoken to me in all that time and I feel it could be some time before she is willing to look at me again. Still, I have what I came for, disguised as a cheep metal idol in my luggage. I have the lotus blade. 


	22. Chapter 21

I don't bother trying to talk my way into the room with Kim. Experience has told me that there is no point and that I'm not going to gain anything by trying. Instead, I put my faith in two things; one, Kim is scrupulously matter-of-fact about her training. For instance, she mentioned that she trains in the Dojo every morning before classes. I know Kim and that means that she will be up at 5:30 in order to get a good spot. So I know where she will be tomorrow morning. Two, I know that almost every guy mentally prepares himself for a break-up and has a contingency plan. Not wanting to bother Felix, I turn to the guy with the errant girlfriend.

"Dude, got some sweats or something?" I ask in my best frat-boy voice. He knows what I mean and slips off, returning in a few moments with a pair of thick grey pants. I pull them on, nodding my thanks and settle down into the place he just vacated on the couch. His girl followed him out so I'm guessing that he'll be sleeping in her cosy tonight.

I close my eyes, aware that Belinda is staring at me but I don't care. I've been attacked in my sleep enough times in the past to know a good way out.

* * *

Early mornings on this campus are surprisingly quiet. I'm not sure what I expected, but there are either more or fewer people than I'd have guessed. There are a plethora of joggers and such abroad but most of them live in their own little iPod induced worlds with nothing to consider of the outside. I'm pretty much able to wander clear to the gym without difficulty. Kim was already gone when I went to the room at six, so I'm guessing she's already gotten herself warmed up.

Stepping inside, there is something deeply familiar about the set-up here. The main entry corridor is a clear run to the front desk where they check student ID and then point you cheerfully in the right direction. I'm already wearing a gi, a training suit, so there's no real need for me to change. The troubling thing is that I couldn't find any weapons in our room. Not even a bo staff or a bokken. I'm pretty good with my hands but Immortal's credo was always that 'a fool uses a lesser tool,' though it took a lot of thought to come to understand the wisdom in that.

Following proper discipline for the first time since I met Hsien and Arahat, I kneel and slide the door to the Dojo aside. The whole thing looks like it was built based on old photos, though it seems that the 'paper' of the wall is more like cardboard stuck to reinforced Perspex.

Kim is before me, moving slowly through a kata in the company of an impossibly slender girl I've never seen before. I sit and watch silently, locking my mind back and beginning the breathing exercises needed to centre myself fully. The lotus begins to bloom and I think about the words of the tattoo.

_A lotus bloom for absent love._

It proves I can love and it allows that I may feel love. Do I love this woman before me? Has it turned to poison in my veins?

Emotions dance as I watch her, hear her, smell her, feel the air move as she attacks, watch as anger flares from her as she executes the moves and taste the shifts in her emotions and her concentration. Living inside your head is a pointless measure when it comes to fighting.

She's angry with me and it's because she thinks I betrayed some kind of trust that my body was hers alone. I know this. The trouble is that I didn't do anything, I sat and I ignored the drunk girl, then asked Belinda how long she had been a synthodrone. Making her see that seems like a lot of trouble so I think its best if I just prove that I'm not the same Ron that she thinks I am. If I'm going to be stuck in this reality for a while, I might as well be who I am.

Her red hair pulled up into a bun dips lightly below a slow roundhouse kick at the same moment that her weight shifts to bring her outside leg over, which in turn her partner ducks. Watching them dance like this is nice, though the anger in her eyes seems to be holding her back a little. We'll have to work on that.

I pick my moment so that Kim will be in a deep block when I speak.

"Excuse me, miss. I'd rather like to take up an argument with my fiancé from last night. Stay for the fight if you wish, I'll leave her in one piece."

"You better have a good reason for walking in here full of bluster after putting me in a mood like this, Ronald Stoppable."

"Well, Kimberly Ann Possible, we seem to have a conflict brewing," I answered in a fairly thick Bad Boy voice, "What do you use as padding for contact sparing here, anyway?"

"We don't Ron, I pull my punches and you struggle to land a blow on me."

"That's the Kim I know and mourned. Fair enough, but don't you dare pull any force on me."

"Ron, I'm not going to hurt you for showing your goodies to Belinda."

"No, you're going to hurt me because I'm telling you to and I'm going to hurt you some if you don't. I won't break any bones but I'm happy to prove I can fight."

She dropped into that hybrid stance of hers and it seemed almost silly to me for a moment. Any one of the teachers I've had over the years would have castigated it for the tension in her hips.

"Threatening to beat me up is not a good way to resolve our grievances, Ron," she said through gritted teeth.

I simply took a few steps forward, adopted a neutral stance and waited.

"Kim, maybe you haven't been paying attention. I don't have any grievances and you haven't brought any to my attention." To punctuate this, I drew my left hand into a simple ready pose that is more for distraction than anything else.

"You went into the common room naked and I found you there with Belinda!"

"I was meditating and she came in. Given the way she reacted when I pointed out some of the cameras, I'm pretty sure she's seen that much skin on me before."

"You went to meditate in your birthday suit?" she snorts derisively in that classic, 'Ron your excuses are whack' way. Then she paused for a second in her circling, "cameras?"

I take the opportunity to lung forward at about half speed and strike with a locked fingers blow towards her neck. She counters this as I expected and attempts an elegant but predictable counter-strike. Any student of martial arts would be impressed.

"I went in what I was wearing. If I'm not sleeping in armour or in the cold, I sleep naked, the freedom is a nice change," I reply as I shove her counter attack to the ground and bring my knee up to strike at her face. I know it won't connect but its enough to get her attention, "seems you pay a lot of attention to your Ron if you don't notice a change in sleeping habits."

She seems stoked up by this and a trio of hammering thrust kicks pop out at me.

"How dare you? You are my Ron!"

"I'm not so sure. If I was, there probably wouldn't be any need for the surveillance that this place is wired with." Grab, flip, switch, block, thrust, push, lock, "there are enough cameras in here to make a reality TV show and I'm not getting the feeling you know about it."

She seems a little out of breath.

"There are no cameras here, Ron, I have Wade do checks on the building every few weeks."

"Now, I know that there are cameras. Once you get used to certain things, you learn what being watched by one feels like. I've been filmed almost every minute since I got here. So have you. Next you'll be telling me that Belinda girl is a real human being."

Block, punch, circle. This really is just kids stuff. I know she's capable of more.

"Of course she is! What has gotten into you?"

"Why aren't you trying to hit me?"

"What?"

"You're fighting as if this was a dance. I'm not trying to hit you because I thought you wanted this in the open. Hit me or I hit you first."

With that she launches into a display that reminds me of the Kim of old. Each block actually requires some effort on my part and the dodges get harder and harder.

"See, now that you put a little effort into it, you're getting there," I remark, smoothly deflecting a thrust kick, grabbing the thigh and pulling her into me. I keep her leg up and twist her body around on her back foot, bringing us to rest in a tango pose.

She looks up at me in shock. I get the feeling that the blows I was letting roll past like raindrops were something that I should have been sprawling from. He green eyes are so beautiful that I'm thrown a little.

"I told you I was a bon-diggety dancer…" I manage to get out as she exploits my starstruck moment to cartwheel from my arms, hammering a shin into the side of my chin.

As I recover my balance a double punch flies at me and I'm forced to pull out a bit more of my powers for show and tell. Repositioning my body, I dropped faster than gravity normally allows, catching myself on my free hand and lashed out with my legs, knocking her sprawling. For the first time in the whole thing, I adopt a slightly deeper stance and prepare to go on the attack.

"So tell me, Kim, when did we fall in love?" I smile as the question emerges and the dragon rises split her outer guard, pushing her onto the defensive.

"For me, that would be when you told me you loved me and refused to let me give up," she replied, shifting into a hybrid Crane defence, "while I was tied to a giant cactus in Bueno Nacho headquarters."

"That sounds utterly fake. You mean to tell me that you decided that you loved me because I told you that I loved you?"

"That's how it happened…"

"I'm impressed. I'm actually living in a fairytale."

"Hey, Ron is a great guy!"

"One that you'd never been attracted to. Ever."

"That's not entirely true…"

"Oh yes, the Moodulators. Did you lie to him about how they worked like my Kim did? It picked him as a target at random?"

Throughout, I've been throwing minor combinations and things that force her to respond. She still wasn't trying to hit me and that was puzzling. After a few more moves, I leapt into a movie classic of the flying rapid kick, each one blocked like the consummate professional that she is.

"How did you know that?" she seems like I just ripped her heart out. She staggers as surely as if I had landed a blow, something I've been careful to avoid up to this point.

"In my life, I found out that Kim had lied to me when a friend explained to me how a moodulator actually works on a mountain while I was trying to come to terms with her death. I've dreamt of her falling to her death over Tokyo, trying to stop Shego and that gaudy plane, every night since it happened," it was a little lie but she really didn't need to know that any night that I use the monkey power I didn't live those dreams. No those were darker dreams.

"She died?"

"Why else would I be so freaked by this whole thing. Utopia is one thing but resurrected love interests are something else. That said, I wonder if Saint could do anything about that…"

"Who's Saint?"

"A friend of the guys who taught me to fight and harness magic. You wouldn't have liked them. Your eidetic gifts wouldn't have worked with them."

"Eidetic gifts? What are you talking about?"

"Haven't you ever noticed that you can do anything but usually after you've seen someone else do it. Like how you learned your 'sixteen styles of Kung Fu'," yes, I used air quotes, mid-fight, "from watching Kung-fu movies with me. That's the main reason that your terminology is as mangled as the translations."

"Are you saying that I don't know Kung Fu?" she seems kind of angry about this whole thing.

"You think that mantis is a kung-fu style," I reply flatly, "enough said."

"What?"

"Mantis is an internal style of temple boxing, not from the same stable as what is commonly thought of as Kung-fu, though the terms are fairly interchangeable. I've had this discussion with a fistful of Shaolin so I know the depth of it."

"Fine, you have me on technicalities."

"You can learn almost anything by observation but that applies only to the physical. There is no way that you can mimic their inner calm and control, that must be taught and learned normally."

"And I couldn't cope with that?"

"My Kim couldn't have and based on your reaction last night, you haven't grown that far."

"Why you!"

* * *

Author's Note: Things are hotting up! If you haven't already, Check out G-Go's Reunion. It's pretty much what I'm aspiring to, plus it becomes relevant in a little while. Thanks to AtomicFire and LAW however that explodes, your comments are ever appreciated and I really hope I can keep you entertained. 


	23. Chapter 22

"Ron. Honey, I need you to talk to the boy. He's broken up."

"Bonnie, I'm not sure there's much I can do," I sigh, the weight of the world on my shoulders. I lost a nugget today which is never a good thing and the other one seems to be having a breakdown. Great.

"They look up to you and you have a lot more skill than most of these kids will ever have. He needs to hear that there's nothing that he could have done."

"That really doesn't help, Bon, take it from me. Besides, I could have fought harder but I didn't. I left the blade in its sheath and I relied on guns and grenades. What sort of mystical warrior am I?"

She wheels around, grabbing me by the sides of my mangled stubble, eyes flaring.

"You are Ronald Eugene Stoppable, the mystical monkey master, bearer of the Lotus blade and the man I love. Even when he's moping about how he could have torn a chunk of his arm out and tried to save a girl who should have done as she was told! Now are you going to talk to the boy and come back for a reward from me for being a wonderful caring leader or are you going to be sleeping with Wade tonight?"

"Who say's I'll be sleeping with Wade if you throw me out?"

"Anne is at one of the other bases and she was fairly lucid this morning," she replied, raising an eyebrow. I concede defeat. While I've never taken advantage of Anne, I've shared her bed many times over the years; partly because I miss Kim, partly because she sometimes misses James and partly because in her lucid moments there have been times when we have both craved the other's company.

"I'll go talk to him, but I'm not planning on joining him in a girly cry-fest."

"I'm not asking you to. He needs to grow up, Ron. You need to show him how."

As she often was, Bonnie was right. That's why I care for her, I guess.

* * *

Damien is curled up on top of a water processor when I finally find him. He looks rough. He's been crying and there's more than a few things clutched in his hands, not least of which being the medallion I salvaged from her body.

"Scooch over," I demand quietly as he looks up at me. He complies and I perch myself next to him on the heavy metal drum with about as much grace as a falling star. We sit in silence for a few moments while I try desperately to clear my centre and feel his emotions. I've become so closed down recently. Between the trouble with Monty and my daughter being born, it's been a rollercoaster I've wanted to forget.

As I found a little of a breakthrough coming on my own heart, he began to open slightly. It's always seemed to me that emotions, like water or electricity, tend to follow the path of least resistance. A person with a completely open mind is very difficult to hide stuff from, simply because you don't want to.

I cut him off almost instantly.

"Let me take a running guess at it. You were childhood sweethearts. You started turning off your mood modifiers to see if you could make each other happy. You started to explore the underground of people who lived real emotions and that led you here. She was scared but you said you'd protect her and now you feel like you've failed. I'm also willing to bet that you think that you could have done something more to save her. Newsflash, so could she.

"Frankly, if she'd remembered her training, she'd probably be alive now. You know this and I know this. Now what's actually bothering you?"

He sat there in shock. In our lives, we aren't used to being told the truth, nor being forced to stare openly at it.

"I…well…I…erm…" he stuttered, seemingly terrified by my words. I guess guilt is a cornucopia of disturbing thoughts.

"What do you have to say for yourself now, kid?" I asked after his fit had died down a little.

"I promised to protect her and I failed," he replied limply, knowing that I'm not going to give that much latitude. I'm just about to respond as I always have, even since Kim died.

_It wasn't your responsibility and her believing that was her fault._

Today, I just can't find those words. They seem hollow, despite being true. I sprawl around desperately for some words that might provide a grip on reality for him but I come up empty. Everything seems like a platitude.

"Why did you feel the need to protect her?"

"Because she was scared. I brought her into this and now she's dead."

"No," I replied abruptly, "she did nothing that she didn't want to in the moment. I don't care if she did it because it was her cause or because she was madly in love with you, she wanted to do this. She wanted in, even if it was some twisted quest to prove that she was worthy of you.

"Maybe you don't realise this, but its very difficult to force anyone to do anything this extreme unless they want to in their heart, even if it is for reasons that you don't understand completely."

"Are you saying this isn't my fault?" he said with a half sneer and a pitch of quiet disbelief.

I laughed a little through my nose, "frankly kid, if you want it to be your fault, there's nothing I can say that will change that. I can see that it isn't your fault but then again, I kind of blame myself."

"What do you mean?"

"I have a lot more power than I brought to bear in that fight. I could have annihilated those Diablos and we would have been home in time for tea but I didn't. You know why? Because it would have hurt me all to hell to use that much power and you kids wouldn't have learned anything. Wouldn't have gained any confidence from it."

"You wanted that moment of hell to be a learning experience?"

"Frankly, yes. If you can't deal with a handful of Diablos, what do you think you're going to do when we face a fist full Bigggrins and a squadron of Funnybunnys with a large number of Diablos as backup? She did her part and we started breaking the damn things to fragments but she didn't run. Think about it, she managed to jump out of cover to shoot them with the disrupter but then she panicked and hid. That's what killed her."

"Did you get a speech like this when Kim died?" he asked with a bitter twist in his voice.

"Which Kim?" I laugh, the pain still there but dulled by the facts of life.

"There was more than one? The first one," he laughs despite himself.

I harden a little at the suggestion.


	24. Chapter 23

A cross block stops a flying kick from Kim, hurling her entire weight behind an attack. There is a great deal of ferocity behind it and I'm beginning to feel the combat as its beat begins to settle into my bones. My heart is fitting in to that beat and my breathing is following along the way.

She flicks herself back off the compression in her leg and I shove back through her motion. She cannonballs across the room and rolls over her shoulder as I barrel in behind her, keeping the pressure high. She flicks back up onto her feet, finding me firmly inside her reach. She tries to make a strike but I close the ground once again, catching her in the armpit with my left hand and pitching her off her feet once again. Too close and you can't strike back. It's the weakness of most combat styles and Kim was never a grappler, hence why Monty always had the upper foot.

"Your Kim? Your Kim?" she demands, close to frenzy. Either she isn't in on this whole thing or I've actually been shifted into another reality. No-one is that good an actor. Moments later she hits the floor, the air slapped from her lungs.

I drop to one knee, the other over her throat, twisting my weight so that her arms are pinned.

"The Kim I knew and loved would have spent the whole of this fight trying to undermine me. There would have been lame jokes and stabs at my character. Every quip she could come up with. You, you seem so much more tame…"

Her eyes flare with hatred under my weight and then I realise what I'm missing. To her, I'm the changed one. I have become hardened and a stony silent warrior, not the big bag of 'child-like wonder' that Nakasumi-San had felt so important. There is something of the old me buried in my heart but that's not what I need to fight here.

Unless it is.

I hurl myself clear of her without resort to muscular action and land lightly on my toes. She slowly picks herself of the floor and adopts an almost half-hearted stance. I've broken her, it seems. That's a horrible thought.

Silently, I drop my stance and stand with my arms open wide; inviting as you like. For a few seconds, I think that she's just going to stand there and stare at me but I feel a warm smile brewing beneath the surface. It breaks through as she staggers towards me, spent. She collapses into my arms and I hold her, supporting her head on my shoulder. For a moment I feel just as happy as I did the morning.

Then the strike came. If I hadn't learned Mantis style from Hsien, I would have been down for the count. She struck me where my balls should have been with enough force to reduce them to jelly. All I can say it that retractable nuts rock!

I break away, placing myself so that a roundhouse kick missed my head and the following strikes miss my midriff. I use the shift in the air caused by the passing blows to draw myself back upright and shift my stance to counter her next combination.

In the terms Miagi used in _Karate Kid_, I block three blows by taking wax off, painting the house and sanding the deck. I catch her ankle with my left foot as it tries to rise and pull it back down. If I let her start jumping, I'm going to have to rise to meet her and that would be bad. Right now, I'm instinctively beginning to clutch at the edges of the Monkey Power and I can feel the Lotus beginning to stir in its hiding place. I have to end this quickly, which means I have to find some way of resolving her issues with me. Preferably without either of us getting hurt in the process.

Desperately trying to think, I flip out of the way of a knee strike that could have split my head like a melon. Think, think, think. How do I get her to realise that I'm not the same Ron but I need her to get to know me? When the hell did my objective change to that? Am I hoping that she can love me for me or do I just want her help in working out what the hell is going on?

Lets see, the only time that we've ever fought like this before was when she was under the influence of the Moodulator and she only snapped out of that because of Shego slashing my pants. Somehow, I don't think flashing my tackle at her will end this. Think. I don't know this world's Ron's fighting style but there's been no mention of him having anything akin to the mystical gifts that I possess. I could pull out some of those but I've done things that it's unlikely that the local me can do already and she hasn't even paused. I'm left with two options at this point.

Either I draw the Lotus Blade or I use a technique that I really dislike using. I think I'm going to have to do the latter, much to my disgust. Sun Wukong was most fond of doing this in the legends but I find the way the different copies of me respond difficult to control.

Sighing, I pull five hairs from my cowlick and mutter the activation words. Like everything Immortal taught me, the understanding is more important than the actual words, which are purely contextual. I blow lightly and the five hairs skip to either side of her as she hammers a blow straight into my chest. I feel my psychic egg buckle slightly under the pressure of the blow as her hand failed to make contact with my flesh.

Her look of confusion turns into one of abject terror as ten hands grab her simultaneously, lifting her from the floor and holding her still. After a brief moment of struggling, she gives in, in shock at the sight that she is presented with.

I can feel her taught flesh beneath all fifty fingers holding her. I bite down on a mix of emotions, ranging from pity to lust to adoration coming from my copies. Each one is part of me but as any scholar knows, the parts are both greater and less than the whole. Each is different, reflecting me slightly differently. The one on the right behind her has brighter eyes and would have her clothing off right here if I let him. I've dealt with this one before.

"I take it I have your attention," I chorus through six mouths. She snaps back to look at me with huge, fearful eyes, "I have no intention of hurting you. This is one of the noticeable ways I can show you the limits of what I have learned. The other is much messier. I need you to listen to me and to talk to me, preferably before we see Belinda again because I don't trust syntho-drones and before we see Hurlbetter again because I swear that dude is bad road."

My copies lower her to the ground, moments before I dismiss the magic that was holding them together. Each hair returns to its own follicle without complaint. I shudder under the wash of emotions that comes from absorbing such beings. I doubt I'll ever get used to that.

* * *

Author's note: Another short chapter today. This is a side effect of having gotten to chapter 35 and not published nearly enough of this.  



	25. Chapter 24

"The parting is a spell that most of us wish we had the power to perform. I'm lucky, I have and you're cursed in that you do too," master Immortal declares with his usual flare. I want to learn how to use the Lotus to its fullest effect and he wants to teach me how to make copies of myself.

"Wouldn't it be more useful to teach the one of me to use the Lotus blade, rather than just make copies of myself?" I ask, feeling more than a little impatient. I had assumed that my training was mostly over and that I was going to be able to take the fight to Drakken before Christmas rolled around. Sad as it is, I have no idea when Hanukah is this year, mostly because I haven't had access to a temple or a Jewish calendar for a long time.

"Maybe there is a reason to teach you this before we start messing with the sword; ever consider that?"

"I have and I can't see the point. I already have more control over the thing than Sun did. Well, at least according to you and Arahat."

"Perhaps Arahat and I lied to you. Perhaps you have little control over it at all. Maybe Sun had powers that you don't imagine yet. Now, are you going to learn from me today or am I going to have to get the whole lot of your teachers together to explain what we're doing?" it was a daring gambit, I'll give him that, but I'm not in the mood for taking him on trust. I killed a man with that thing.

"You're going to have to explain the whole thing, I think. I'm not accepting any more lessons without explanation."

He just grins.

* * *

The biggest surprise I receive is who my circle of teachers consists of. Arahat, Immortal, Sensei and Saint are all there as I expected. More of the paragons that I haven't even met sit around the edges of the tent. I am introduced to them as Pagan, Prophet (Jewish!), Dreamer, Shaman and Watcher. I'm not sure which religions most of them represent…hell, I'd never even heard of Daoism before Immortal started handing me my butt.

Also present are a number of the Shaolin and Wudang masters that I have been training with; in increasing numbers recently. Monty Fiske sits to the let of Sensei, at peace for the first time since I met him. The strangest presence here, however is that of Wade Christopher Lodden.

"Wade? What the hell are you doing here?" I demand, completely taken off guard by this.

"Stoppable-San, please take a seat. All will be explained in time," answers Sensei in the most commanding fashion I've heard from him since we left Japan. He seemed somehow diminished up to this point but now he's gone back to his Yoda, bigger than life ways in an instant.

"Very well, Sensei," I reply, bowing to the prescribed depth, something I haven't done until now, ever. I think he understands that I'm irked about this. To prove my point, I sit down cross-legged at one end of the ring, directly opposite Sensei and Wade and look to them expectantly. There is some muttering from the traditional oriental elements of the circle as I breach protocol in this way.

"Stoppable-San, you came to me over a year ago, when we were still in Japan, at the Yamanuchi school. You were a broken man, a boy thrown into the currents without a lifeline. You had committed acts in your need to hide from the forces of your enemies and their synthetic ghosts that haunt you to this day. You were, in effect, damaged. I saw this as a grave thing and with the help of your old foe, Fiske, I was able to draw you back out, into the realm of feeling.

"In order to do this, Fiske was forced to draw out your rage. He did this tirelessly, until your anger could be uncovered and laid bare in the sun. At this point, we were forced to abandon the school and flee across China. You committed yourself to our cause, as you have for so many others in the past, putting away your fears, conquering them and making them your strength. As we travelled, we encountered many here who would become your teachers, including the most influential here; Masters Immortal and Arahat.

"You have gone along with everything that we have taught. You have honed yourself into a weapon under our guidance but now you have been given another weapon and it is time for us to teach you how to be a man."

I sit for a moment wondering what the hell he's talking about. I'm a man according to every state of the union, even if I couldn't drink their beer. I continue staring at Sensei, wondering what the punch-line is going to be. It's Immortal that speaks first, however.

"A poor craftsman may blame his tools, but what if he's right?" he asked quietly, his voice carrying unnaturally as it always does. I tilt my head in his direction as he continues, "I've asked that question of you so many times before and yet you seemed to have missed the point. Sensei explained it well when he asked you his version of it; 'just because you could compose a symphony on a broken pipe, does that mean you should?'

"We know all about your past, Arahat can read you like a book. We know that Kim used to call you 'potential boy' and every time she made a change in you, you slipped from her control, becoming what she described as a monster. That is because of a very specific piece of human nature that you are virtually an exemplar of. It is said that 'those who cannot follow are doomed to lead'."

"That's all very nice, but it still doesn't answer why I'm being taught to clone myself instead of how to use the shapeshifting sword to crush robots," I snap, thinking that I want to get this over with as soon as possible.

"What this amounts to, Ron, is that your nature does not make you a good student. We have devised a way of using the Lotus that is complex and hugely effective but it will require a lot of skill and knowledge on your part to implement. The trouble is, the moment that you get beyond us, you will become virtually unteachable. Your inability to be merely a follower will kick in and that other drummer you follow will begin to strike all the louder.

"We will outline the materials that we will be teaching you, but not in the order that we will be doing it and not exactly how we will be making that teaching known to you. Trust me, this was devised by Arahat and master Lodden to ensure that everything will click when the time is right."

"You're sneak teaching me?"

"More setting up dominoes, if you want an honest answer," he replies, smiling knowingly.

* * *

After a great deal of explanation of how I was to learn the esoteric techniques of Immortal and Arahat, learn to step into the dreaming, whatever that is, call forth aid when it is needed and speak directly to the hearts of men, we finally get around to why Wade is here.

"Well, Ron," he began, pulling that face that says 'you're not going to understand this' that I'm so used to seeing on a two inch screen, "I've been running scans on the Lotus Blade, trying to work out how it works. I know it's magic, but there seemed to be some kind of underlying mechanism behind its shifting. Thanks to Monty's ability to change the weapon, I was able to measure what happens when it does.

"Trying not to put this in overly technical terms, the Lotus Blade isn't a solid weapon. It's made up of an unknown number of tiny grains, each one shaped like a tiny pin. These move over each other and seemingly through one another to form the objects you create. The thing is, we don't really know the limits of their motion, because until you killed Fukushima, no one had ever had the Lotus create discreet objects before and you didn't technically do that, Fukushima's subconscious mind did.

"Immortal thinks that by teaching you to inhabit more than one body at a time, we may be able to gradually ease you into doing some interesting things with the weapon."

"So you can't teach me how to use the Lotus blade now because it'll stop me learning cool stuff later?" I ask finally, trying desperately to work out what's going on.

"Basically."

"I can live with that, I guess."

* * *

It turns out that Immortal was right after all. Cloning myself is easy compared to keeping control of just one clone. It's a truly maddening experience being simultaneously two different people having different experiences but looking at the world through the same basic framework.

Creating a copy requires investing part of yourself into it and that means that they will have a slightly different focus to you and you goals will mean something slightly different to each of you. The experience isn't so much controlling the copies as trying to keep your head straight in a lot of different games. It's like having multiple cases of déjà vu, all at the same time.

The part of me that rises to the surface in these copies with alarming regularity is my passion. My lust, my anger. It's like having a feeling that you're doing wrong by not responding to your baser instincts all the time. Apparently, that is usually the first thing that you are able to tap into and the more copies you make, the more dilute it becomes. Unfortunately, I'm not able to create more than one copy at the moment without being confused which me is the real me.

My training has gone from esoteric to utterly surreal. Right now, both of me are fighting two of Immortal on one of a collection of gigantic stone cacti over a giant pit of lava that Arahat realised for the purpose.

I bound from one spine to another, trying desperately to keep my minds focused, maintain my balance, plan my next move, keep an eye on Immortal and avoid dropping either pants or sword. Passion-me leaps into the air and exchanges multiple blows with one of the Immortals as they bounce between spikes and off each other. Passion-I'm knocked onto his back as Immortal throws his Jian past him and glides through to stand on one hand on the pommel and deliver a pair of bone wrenching side kicks.

At that moment, I pull my attention back to my own space in time to duck a thrust from another Jian. This time, I'm not going home with any broken bones or deep cuts. I dip and dive as he begins the first strokes of 'Dao', one of the most difficult characters to avoid and begin to sail through the air, dancing on thermals and stepping on sparks. Then he starts throwing fire at me. Is there anything that man can't do?

Where have I heard that before?

* * *

Author's Note: Now it's just getting a little silly but I guess that's what I get for proof reading my own materials. Forewarning: I'm going to end up mangling the plot of Reunion within the next 5 chapters so anyone who hasn't read it, I suggest you do before the chapters hit the 30's or you'll have the plot ruined for you. If anyone's confused about what Ron's powers are, check out the Wikipedia page for Journey to the West. It's not hugely informative, but it's easier than reading the whole of Monkey by Waley or the whole translation by Anthony Yu (University of Chicago Press, 1999) though it is an awesome read. 


	26. Chapter 25

Starbucks is one of those places that I'll never decide conclusively if I like or not. Sometimes I love the place and sometimes I hate it. A lot of that depends on the company and the subject of conversation that I associate with it at the time. Right now, I'm suspecting that I may come to hate it again.

"Run this by me again, Ron," Kim demands, on the high point of her little anger/sadness rollercoaster, "you expect me to believe that you're from some kind of alternate reality where I'm dead and the world is an oppressive utopia?"

"When you say it like that, it sounds absurd," I grin, reaching for my tea. I'm not a fan of caffeine and a long time in the orient with an English guy tends to leave marks.

"I'm not getting it. Are you trying to hurt me? Are you leaving me or something?" and now she's back on the down slope. I pause for a moment and let my gut think and simmer. Live in the moment. What do I want? Live the life you must and others will follow.

"Who are you?" I ask after a deep breath and a moment of hesitation. It's such a silly thing to ask and I know I'm going to have to set right what I mean but that's not the point.

"I'm Kim Possible, soon to be Kim Stoppable; your fiancé."

"That's not what I mean, Kim. I know what label you go by but that doesn't tell me anything much about what you really think and feel. Tell me who you are, tell me things that you've never admitted to yourself, let alone other people and then once you know yourself, you can start to understand me."

"That sounds like a load of new aged crap, Ron."

"Crap it may be but this is very old stuff. Now start talking."

"About what? You know most of what my Ron would know, which was most of it."

"I didn't know crap about Kim when it mattered. For instance, have you any idea what it feels like to have your best friend in the world lock you in a closet so that you can't interfere with her date with 'Golden Boy'? It wasn't as if there was any give and take on that subject either, she laid into me for the best part of an hour about skipping Bueno Nacho with her to have a date with Zita. Now, if you have some thoughts on the subject, lets hear them."

"That is so ferociously unfair, Ron. I've apologised for the closet thing more times than I can count. I didn't even know that you were locked in that closet."

"You locked it," I replied flatly.

"What?"

"You were the one that threw the catch. It's on the inside face of the lock. This became clear after I had Rufus trash the lock. Only way that door could have locked is if you did it."

"I…"

"How did Ron get out of that closet?"

"He had Rufus trash the lock. After I locked it. Look, I know what you're thinking," she announced, though I'm pretty sure she didn't, "Ron never argued and I told the lie that I'd apologised with so many times that it stuck. I just wanted to be alone with Josh. The same reason that I didn't pick up all those times that the kimmunicatior went off. I thought you'd make me feel bad."

"Why is that, I wonder?"

"Because if you called me on my lie, I'd not be able to keep it up. You know how bad I was at that with you," she says, looking hopeful. There were more than a few lies that only came out after her death so I know this isn't true. When Wade finally cracked into her diary, it turned out that not only had 'golden boy' made it to second base but apparently, I was actually his replacement, moodulator or not. At the time, I just wrote it off as hormones, lusting after the guy she saw all the time. In the darker moments, I assumed that those fantasies were directed at me because I was easy from her point of view.

I tilt my head to one side before I answer.

"I've read you diary up to the point of May 13th, the day before you died. You were dead so there was no way you could have edited it like you almost certainly did before showing it to this Ron. I know a lot of lies that came tumbling down after your death."

She recoils, panic in her eyes.

"You know about that?"

"For such a prude, thinking about having sex with me, even as the French like to say, 'le bum-secks,' was a little unexpected," I grin, then my face fell slightly, "but I simply assumed that was because I was the nearest guy or maybe because you thought I'd be easy. It wasn't until I found out the truth about the moodulators that I started to wonder. And there's only so much time you can lament not seeing signs," I finish with a feeling of perfect calm. In some ways, it was the calm before the storm.

"So what are you interrogating me for? You know I liked you, you know I loved you!" and now for the upslope. Full fledged rage is only a few moments away children.

"Still don't know what made you love me and if I don't know that, I can't decide if it's true now."

"Because you're sweet and kind and funny and loyal and would do anything for me. Because you're the best thing that ever happened to me!"

"That, Kim, is why you fail," I say, getting up from the table and walking away.


	27. Chapter 26

Per the work on project: Stoppable, analysis of combat #978-217-350G has been ordered by researcher Stevens. The following is a transcript of footage contained within the visual records of Diablo units A539 and Q221, along with emotional and reactionary reports recovered from synthetic units Bonnie541, Eric903, Possible864 and Tara329. Included is the mapping and analysis of Stoppable's capabilities and combat potency.+++++

-location: Arizona facility BC121: schematics included.

00:00:13 – Subject Stoppable enters the containment area flanked by two resistance members. These individuals are noted as Rockwaller, Bonnie and Flagg, Brick. Review their respective files for combat capabilities.

00:00:52 – short discussion ensues.

Rockwaller: I thought that this was part of the Diablo research system.

Stoppable: It is.

Rockwaller: Then why is there, like, no security here

Stoppable: If I had an answer to that, I'd give it to you

Flagg: Can we just get on with this? This place is giving me a serious uneasy feeling

00:02:07 – Flagg and Rockwaller enter the primary corridor. Stoppable enters the secondary containment room.

00:03:21 – Flagg begins to breach the security system of main lab complex using a numeric sequencer. Unit Tara329 moves to intercept. Unit is armed with neural stunner.

00:03:27 – Stoppable defeats door of secondary containment chamber. Method unknown. Current analysis suggest that he delivered in excess of 9800PSI of impact damage to a specific location. No weapon was visible in his hands. Measurements on the wreckage of the 1.5 tonne steel door has proven inconclusive. Units Eric 903 and Possible864 move to intercept along subcorridor 7b.

00:03:51 – Stoppable begins searching the room for unknown target after spending 4.3 seconds rubbing his left hand and cursing. As he never located it, it was assumed to hold personal significance. The bodies that were present in this room have been seconded to the research facility in order to determine possible objectives.

00:04:42 – Unit Tara329 steps into main corridor and advances behind subjects Rockwaller and Flagg. Flagg is struck four times in quick succession with blasts from the Neural stunner and collapses. Later DNA tests on the faeces proved that the subject was indeed Flagg. Production of synthetics in his pattern has yet to occur.

00:04:59 – subject Bonnie jinks down the hallway, avoiding three further shots from Tara329's blaster. Rockwaller engages Tara329 by grabbing the outstretched hand holding the blaster and using a combination of momentum and her weight to wrench it free from Tara329's grasp. She rises to bring the weapon to bear but is struck by Tara329's fist on the recoil. Suggest changing the basic firing stance of synthetic units to guard against this issue.

00:05:01 – Noise of the conflict reaches Stoppable who responds with great alacrity. Between +00:05:01:15 and +00:05:01:19, he is seen to move a total of 58 feet, blinking between frames. Leaving the secondary containment chamber, he encounters Units Eric903 and Possible864 14.3 feet outside the vault door.

00:05:03 – Subject Stoppable executes a diving leap between the two synthetic units, coming close to head height. Contempt is notable on his face at this point. It is directed at the Eric pattern unit, while he noticeably ignores the Possible unit. Reasons for this have been postulate but little is conclusive at this point.

00:05:04 – Unit Eric903 grabs the passing ankle of subject Stoppable, causing his trajectory to arrest. He begins to fall, though his motion is difficult to measure. Subject Stoppable executes some form of twist between frames and transforms his downward motion into force which he directs into the face of Unit Eric903. The contempt on his face is great. Unit Eric903 is catapulted into the wall as Stoppable comes to rest at a rate slower than gravitic acceleration should allow. Analysis of this move has proven impossible as it occurs between frames.

00:05:08 – Due to subject Stoppable's lack of reaction towards her physical appearance, Unit Possible864's secondary programming kicks in and she transforms her forearms into blades. Her assault begins with a cross slash, then a thrust/guard combination, though mysteriously, both of these attacks fail to find their marks. Stoppable seems to have made no specific attempt at defence during this time.

00:05:09 – Subject Rockwaller rises to her feet as Tara329 adopts a defensive posture. Despite our best efforts in programming, it seems that the synthetic personality engrammes are still subject to the force of Rockwaller's personality. All evidence that we have to support this seems to be conjecture, however.

00:05:10 – Unit Possible864 attempts a double thrust towards subject Stoppable. With surprising grace, his shifts between the blades, sweeps her from her feet and kisses her. Evidence of similar tactics on his part are documented elsewhere. Current data on a countermeasure is inconclusive, save removing the aspects of the Possible unit's personality that proved so effective against him in the past.

00:05:12 – Unit Possible864 ceases to struggle. She appears to be enjoying herself. Her programming kicks in around 3 seconds later, convincing her that she has been violated. She redoubles her attack, much to the amusement of Subject Stoppable.

Stoppable: Not much for the kissy-face, eh KP?

Possible864: (grunts in reply)

Stoppable: (laughs warmly)

Stoppable's response confused some of the researchers until if was determined that he was responding rather like he was teasing a lover's younger sister or twin. This may prove that he has learned the ability to completely dissociate the appearance of the individual from the emotions he holds towards them, which could prove key.

00:05:37 – Subject Rockwaller engages Tara329 with a hybrid combat style similar to Subject Possible, Kim – deceased. The hybrid of reach combat attacks, kicks and acrobatics proves effective. Tara329's adrenal equivalency system reads high during these moments. Subject Rockwaller successfully downs Tara329 at time reference +00:06:21 and brings a combat knife to bear.

00:05:54 – Unit Eric903 regains its footing and returns its head to factory position. He draws a pair of mark 2 Uzi sub machine guns from his internal spacing and begins firing into the melee. Review of the Eric series' disregard for the Possible series may require review. Possible864 displays shock as Stoppable positions himself between her and Eric903.

00:05:56 – Each of the hail of bullets from Eric903's weapons begins to halt at a distance of 3.7 feet from Stoppable's presented right arm. There is no sign of energy exchange, though the monitors note a small amount of discolouration in the region. Traces of Stoppable's blood was found in this area under examination.

00:06:03 – His ammunition exhausted, Eric903 charges through the wall of hovering projectiles, scattering them. Later examination of the projectiles reveals that they encountered point resistance comparable to hitting plate iron nine inches thick. Small indentations were found in the precise centre of each bullet.

00:06:04 – Seeing the approach of Eric903, Stoppable makes a curt gesture and the synthetic's head is removed from its shoulders. Repeated analysis of this moment has yielded little, though Eric903's tactile sensors picked up the piercing of his membrane by what seems to be a monofilament wire of unprecedented strength. Thermal scanners have found no trace of the microdyne technologies designed by subject Lodden, Wade, nor any known forcefield projection system.

00:06:09 – Unit Possible864 screams in horror at the destruction of Eric903. She begins a withering assault on Stoppable without success, though she forced him back into the main concourse. At this time, the secondary alarms have responded to Eric's destruction and Bonnie541 and Diablo units A539 and Q221 have been dispatched to the scene.

After a period of brutal grappling, subject Rockwaller successfully brings her knife into contact with Tara329. She rapid collapse into liquid state dictates why the Possible line was upgraded to mark two prior to this point. As the Tara series are civilian models, this was seen as excessive. Rockwaller returns to aid the stricken Flagg.

00:06:27 – Bonnie541 and the Diablo units enter the concourse. As standard, the Diablos take up supporting positions and Bonnie541, part of the Bebe-core line, begins to ready itself for enhanced speed. Possible864 is having trouble striking Stoppable, who seems to be protected by some form of tactile forcefield. Appearing like a greyish mist on the image viewer, we have been unable to determine the specifics of this.

00:06:32 – Bonnie541 launches her assault with a bullrush, relying on superior strength and greater speed to bring Stoppable down. Stoppable once again moves faster than the cameras can capture and Bonnie541 comes to a halt, transfixed on a 31 inch, straight bladed, double edged sword. This weapon was not in evidence in Stoppable's possession before this moment. Obviously confused, Bonnie 541 fails to react during Stoppable's moments of subsequent hesitation and is bisected as he flicks the weapon down then pulls the blade up through her torso, through the top of her head. She falls to the ground.

Later examination of the wreckage of Bonnie541 shows cutting that was almost atomically smooth, indicating a level of cutting power almost beyond those possible in normal physics. Analysis continues.

00:06:52 – Diablo units A539 and Q221 open fire on target Stoppable, as per their basic programming. Possible864 flips away from the crossfire but Stoppable makes surprisingly little movement. Despite their relative lack of concentration, the plasma streams were unable to make contact with him.

00:07:09 – Stoppable smiles, mutters something that the sensors cannot discern and leaps towards Unit A539. He lands standing horizontally on its torso as though it were the ground. His longsword lashes out, destroying the Diablo's visual sensors, albeit temporarily.

00:07:11 – Q221 reconciles its friendly fire directives with its target priority list and opens fire on Stoppable. The beam passes through Stoppable without interacting with him and strikes A539 directly in the power core. At this loss of power A539 is rendered offline and contracts back to default size.

00:07:15 – Analysis proves inconclusive as to whether Stoppable's absence between +00:07:12 and 15 is a malfunction of the camera. Q221 adjusts targeting and opens fire once again. A shield of some form of metal appears in Stoppable's hands and displays some form of parabolic quality, refocusing the plasma onto a point in the Diablo's leg. As it collapses, he is in motion, making a number of gestures similar to those at +00:06:04 and once again, the monofilament weapons come into play. Diablo Q221 is reduced to chunks that can only be described as 'bitesized' in a matter of moments.

00:07:52 – Stoppable stands in silence up to this point, then returns from his revere as Possible864 begins to move once again. Her attack is somewhat hesitant and it remains unclear as to whether this is her self preservation subroutines, genuine fear of Stoppable or a reticence to harm him.

00:07:58 – Possible864 begins her attack with a hesitant thrust. Stoppable makes little attempt to dodge, the blade punching into the meat of his stomach. There is no blood evident and oddly, no trace was found on Possible864's hand after her termination.

00:07:59 – Subjects Rockwaller and Flagg emerge from the main corridor, Flagg walking awkwardly but carrying the target of their raid, the prototype silicon disrupter rifle. It has become a point of contention that security was insufficient on this potent weapon since the incident.

Rockwaller: You had your chance bitch!

00:08:01 – Rockwaller levels Tara329's neural stunner at Possible864 who is trapped with a hand stuck in Stoppable's abdomen.

Stoppable: You heard the lady

00:08:04 – Possible864 registers panic for 0.8 of a second before the Neural stunner blast hits her. The strike is to the chest region and as usual, the reaction is violent. Possible864's chest splits as the synthetic liquids boil and she collapses to the ground, released from Stoppable's abdomen.

00:08:43 – Rockwaller and Flagg limp from the base, leaving Stoppable with the fast expiring Possible864. He kneels down beside her, stroking her face. She looks up at him with fear in her eyes.

Stoppable: I don't know where synthetics go when they die or even if you're dying, but I'll do what I can to relieve the pain.

He places his palm on her forehead and his breathing deepens. She arches her back and gasps, even as her gel leaks out.

Possible864: I…love you…Ron

Stoppable: I know, Kim, I know

00:10:19 – Stoppable closes Possible864's eyes with gentle care and leaves the building.

In a combat that lasted only 3 minutes 14 seconds, Stoppable was able to defeat two Diablos, a mark II synthetic and a hybrid model cyber-synthetic single-handed. Though we aren't really any closer to determining how he does this, we have at least a good deal more data on his combat abilities and limits.+++++

* * *

Author's Note: The trouble with First person is that a) you rant a little and b) you have to come up with new and interesting ways to do action scenes... 


	28. Chapter 27

"When Kim died, I didn't get any speech like this, no," I reply with darkness creeping over my eyes.

"What happened then?" Damien asked, looking a little worried about what he might find out. He must have heard some of the truly dark rumours that connect to my time just after Kim's death. It was not a pretty time at all.

"Well, Kim died on May 14th in Japan, during the parade in Nakasumi's honour…"

I told him the basic details of the story as I remembered them. The fight with the ninja, my inability to get free of the balloon, the fact that I couldn't get to Kim to help her, even though I'd remembered to put on my rocket skates. I told him of my guilt as I impotently watched her fall to her death. That part is a faint portion of the story, however.

"Then I stayed with her for the night. I slept in the morgue, lamenting the loss of my best friend. Rufus say beside me, looking for a way to console me, but there wasn't one. I thought of all the good times and the bad times, left alone in a refrigerated room for hours on end.

"After a long time, Miss Kyoko came to sit with me. I couldn't understand why she did this at the time, I mean, we had failed. Nakasumi was in captivity, taken by Shego and Kim was dead. All I had to show for my work was a single huge ninja with a high voice. The Nakasumi corporation was out its founder and a huge amount of money thanks to the wrecked parade and the damages that I had caused by crashing into a department store. It's one of the reasons that I was able to eventually get perspective on this stuff. I was there to help Kim but she always chose the equipment and with the exception of the grapplers really never taught me how to use any of it.

"Anyway, Kyoko brought me a heavy coat and sat with me, drying my tears to prevent salty ice forming on my cheeks. She let me speak of Kim the whole night and finally said, 'you truly loved her, didn't you?"

"It was something that I had been realising increasingly by that point and, yes, it was true. Trouble is; you don't know what you've got till it's gone. I remember the first time that sort of thing really came to the fore. I'd gone running around the world trying to find a book I thought I'd misplaced in a villain's lair. Wade and I stumbled into Drakken's lair at the time and were in the process of accidentally thwarting him and Shego asks: 'Hey, Stoppable, where's Kimmie?" and I go blurting out, "she's not my girlfriend!"

"Everyone in the room just stared at me for a moment before she said, "I never said she was, Champ."

"Anyway, Kim's folks arrived the very next morning. Wade had taken no time in informing them of her death. They were very supportive, but there was something about James that made me feel bad. On edge. It took three more days to ship Kim's body home and for me to get back to school. That was the most horrible part of it. I found out who my friends were in that time. Monique and Felix were a given, people I would expect. Then there was Tara and Mankey, who seemed to make a point of having my back."

"What about Bonnie?" Damien asks with a shocked look, given that I haven't mentioned her.

"Bonnie, ha. No, Bonnie made my life that little bit more miserable. Digs and stabs, little twists of the knife to try to tarnish my memories of Kim. She was a queen bitch at the time and no mistake. Brought up crap like the time Kim locked me in a janitor's closet to go on a date with Mankey and things like that. I didn't care, though, cause I loved her.

"Then the funeral rolled around. I had spent the last four nights awake and it took my father carrying me to the shower and washing me to get me ready for it. I stood there in an ill fitting tux that a secret agent once gave me, trying desperately to forget about what had happened the day before. This guy, Eric, had shown up at school and started hitting on Monique, making her go all weak at the knees. He had dissed Felix and mocked my pain and Monique was going along with it. It was torture and I couldn't bring myself to hit him.

"The funeral was beautiful. It was performed in four languages simultaneously, Latin, Greek, English and Hebrew, using a hybrid service. Her grave was a perfect marble construction that I still visit each time I can. The statue was a perfect rendition of her greatest smile; the genuine, calm, sweet one that she shared with me so often when we were alone. The smile that I loved most in the whole world. She was my first love and I will never forget her, nor the pain that was inflicted on me with her memory.

"Drakken had other ideas as to what to do with her memory. I began to see her everywhere I went. Out of the corner of my eye, in shop windows, down darkened alleys as I wandered the streets at night, unconcerned for my safety. Thought I was going mad, stark staring mad.

"I began to wonder when someone else said they were having the same feeling. I set a very basic trap, waited on a rooftop and set Rufus to monitor the best place to spy on me from there. Sure enough, a Kim took up position. When I heard this, I danced for joy. Maybe Kim hadn't died and this was all a plot by her and Wade to fool Drakken. No such luck.

"Long story short, she confronted me, I got my ass kicked. May not be genuine Kim but they can sure fight like her." He looks at me as if to say, _you defeated hundreds of syntho-Kims_. "Before you say anything, there was a time before I could fight, ok?

"Then came the junior prom. That was the real crunch point because it was down to me. I'll tell you the specifics some other time but the Diablos were activated at midnight that day. Monique had dragged me to the prom, looking seriously hot in this little red dress. This was before she had the twins, mind. I'd love to know what it is about Middleton that causes everyone here to have twins. It was a nice enough night, Bonnie was sulking because I was getting danced with and she was sitting at the side with Brick. Nice guy, can't dance to save his life.

"We went home and then things started to go to hell. The twins and I managed to destroy the Bueno Nacho sign with one of their toy rockets and some extra rocket fuel before we got squashed. Middleton was a special case, however, the mountains kept out the master transmitter's signal. The rest of the world fell apart over a couple of days.

"Day after the prom and the nightmare started properly, Bonnie went missing. I get dragged out of bed by a frantic looking Brick, who doesn't know who else to turn to. The Diablos had moved in and taken the city so there wasn't exactly a police force to speak of."

"What's a police force?" he asks, throwing me off.

"Police are people paid and trained to catch criminals, people who break the law."

"People like us?"

"Usually more common criminals, thieves and murderers and…well, yeah, people like us. Anyway. We went out onto the streets to do the classic 'has anyone seen her' bit and then we just ran into her. She was with Eric. I should have known, they were both mean spirited monsters. Then they attacked us. In the open, with knives. Suffice to say, we fled. The followed us and eventually we managed to get a drop on them. Brick beat Eric to a pulp with a garbage can and I managed to cut Bonnie's thigh with her knife. Suffice it to say, we were both shocked as hell when she collapsed into a pile of gunk.

"We mounted a rescue, found her naked in a test tube, fought Shego and then fled."

"What, you're going to skip over that bit?"

"It's really not relevant to this part of the story. It was exciting, she was hot and it took my mind off Kim. That was its only real significance at the time. Well, for me anyway. I'm pretty sure that was what planted the seeds in Bonnie's mind that I was a good guy.

"Regardless, things had been going from bad to worse with the Possibles. The Twins had stopped inventing stuff, James was treating me as if I'd slain her myself and Anne was completely in denial about the whole thing. You know she still talks to Kim? Apparently sees her all the time too. Eventually James managed to convince me that it was actually my fault. I didn't come back to the real world until he left.

"I decided to leave Middleton for regions that didn't have too many Diablos at the time and lacked natural resources that Drakken thought of as essential. I had to steer clear of pure silica, aluminium, iron, molybdenum, oil and phosphorus deposits. My first stop was staying with friends of my father's family in the holy land. Tex-mex isn't all that popular out there so only invading armies of Diablos were present. Might not sound like much but there weren't any Bigggrins and the like to deal with. The other thing working in my favour was that human appearance synthetics don't like the heat too much. Something about the dust I think.

"I had trouble finding employment, but I managed to find work thanks to the wonderfully unstable political situation in the region. I did some seriously illegal things running drugs and munitions before I ended up getting weapons training from the mercs I was working for. I ended up killing a fist full of people on company time, six I think, and helped uproot a terrorist cell. I have no idea what they were working towards, just that they were the other guys and I was being paid to do it.

"Extremists tend to think more or less the same no matter what they're after in the end. I didn't really have any problem fighting them but the lethal force left a bitter taste in my mouth. After that, I scraped up some shekels and made my way to Japan to hide out at the Yamanuchi ninja academy. I was a mess. I was blaming myself for everything that had happened, to the point where I felt like I should have forced Kim to train me in using everything imaginable, snowboards, vehicles, aircraft. I convinced myself that I should have been the more competent member of the team to make sure she was still alive.

"With that in mind, I threw myself into training in a way that was unhealthy to say the least. I would train from three in the morning till midnight and then fall over before beginning again. I was training in full contact, without armour. Wooden swords or not, that still did me a lot of damage. Anything to avoid thinking about Kim. I burned my candle at both ends until there was little or nothing left. I became good, very good, I could beat Hirotaka hands down after only a few months of this treatment and still I kept going. I was angry and I had no objective except trying to make myself up to some standard that I felt I should meet. In this time, Monkey Fist joined us and began to teach me some of his stuff. He became something of a friend to me in my misery.

"Then Drakken got wise to our little hideout and stormed the place with close to a hundred Diablos and supporting units. Out of more than six hundred cadets, only one hundred and forty odd of us escaped. We ended up fleeing across China in a sort of exodus. The irony of a Jew leading an exodus isn't lost on me. Eventually, we got forgotten in all the other troubles Drakken was having with the Glorious Communist Republic. His chipping program was stalling in a big way, given that the local government was never sure how many citizens it had at any given point. We eventually found a place to hide in Tibet near the Nepal border; some old monastery where the locals were allowed to keep up their religious practices because it was good for tourism.

"There I met my greatest teachers. It took me another year on top of the year and half I'd already spent mourning Kim to come to terms with it, but I emerged a hell of a lot stronger for it. I can teach you some of what they taught me, but it'll get a hell of a lot more painful before it gets better, I'll warn you now."

He sat for a moment, staring at me in near horror.

"I'm in."


	29. Chapter 28

Monty threw yet another punch. I still haven't decided if he actually punches or kicks with those feet of his. Damn monkey paws. Still, I have to defend against the top ones. Aside from Immortal and supposedly Arahat, he's the only one able to keep up with me at the moment. He's in full control of his Monkey power, having spent time focusing on unlocking it.

He spent most of the time I was in Tokyo learning the multiplication and shape-shifting powers of Sun Wukong, going for stopping power over finesse. Immortal chose to train me in the opposite direction, it seems.

Not that I'm bitter, but I'm trying to find a bright side to my training direction as I try and win this sparing match. Fighting more than a hundred, perfectly coordinated, ten armed Diablo sized Montys is proving very difficult indeed, especially when he's making a point of wielding large light-sabres to keep the pressure up. I can parry the damn things but I don't have the speed to keep up my defence without something going crazy.

I need to escape the ground, that way I can limit the number of Montys able to bring themselves to bear. I'm thinking that if I can deny him leverage, I won't have as much trouble parrying the blows.

I take skyward and instantly regret it; Monty has speed on me if not agility in the air. I can turn on a sixpence but he's fast and that's a dangerous thing when he's got that much reach. Parrying ten blows at once is proving difficult already.

Conserving my energy, I hammer through his outer defences and flung him at a pair of hims coming the other way. Using the breach, I push through the gap, spawning a trio more of me to take off in different directions.

* * *

I cannonball for the break in the valley outcropping. I know that Monty will have to stop in order to reduce his size and reduce the number of things that can snag on the edges of the route. I make it without too much trouble, trusting in my smaller size to avoid wind-resistance. I cut under the mists and hammer up the edge of the run. He hits the edges of the cloud, gaining height and powers through a small spire, the other two of him taking up flanking positions like wingmen.

I roll and begin swimming through the air on my back, materialising and throwing small projectiles at him and accelerating them at him with my powers. I caught him a good couple of strikes in the head, distracting him enough that he comes crashing to the ground. As the copy loses consciousness, it breaks into smoke, disappearing to rejoin one of the other copies.

Turning over, I catch myself onto a heavy rock and slip horizontally into a crevasse, hopping and jiving along it as though I was falling down it slowly. The fists land side by side and belch fire at me. I shift my energies to absorb the power he converted into fire, drawing ribbons of power into my core. It's perfectly possible to turn any form of magical effect into power, but I couldn't fend off weapons fire with that trick.

I burst forth from the crevasse wreathed in fire, sword drawn and hammer into the lead one using all of the trapped power to break through whatever defence his crossed light-sabres offered and passed into the sky, the last Monty Fisk in hot pursuit.

* * *

I break for open sky, holding my breath and holing that I can run my body on pure chi. At the peak of my rise, the sky darkens and I gaze down at the earth, facing down at the beautiful sight that is earth from orbit. I watch as clouds roll past the surface of China, looking to see if I could spot the great wall. I know I can't unless I enhance my senses to spot it but I still love to try. I can see why Superman always does this in the movies.

There are Fiskes coming this way. Trust my luck to have managed to grab forty of them. It's insane. I could have had three but no.

Shaking myself, I free hairs from myself, wordlessly muttering the incantations to make more copies of me. I lack the control to use all of these thousands of copies but I can use them for some interesting tricks. As the first Fiske draws near, I form another me directly in his path. He slams into me, the other me. I grab him as he passes and cancel the original me, taking my place with the new body.

I pummel him mercilessly with fists encased in the fabric of the Lotus blade and the copy shatters like glass. I shift again, cutting of another then another. Shards of Monty plummet to earth as I destroy more and more of them, though I'm starting to run out of hairs and he's getting wise. I begin to swarm him, bringing to bear three of me against each of him, desperate to bring the conflict to an end as soon as possible.

A group of me grab that last three of him and fall to earth, cutting across the sky like meteorites, burning under the weight of the atmosphere. He begins to crack under the strain and we collapse back down into a single me, sheltering behind the last remaining Fiske.

I break from the plunge as he makes contact and swoop out back into the open sky.

* * *

I land and form the blade into a weapon I've never seen in real life, but in the movies. It's something from one of those comic book movies about a guy who slays vampires. Similar to a boomerang with a heavy central weight and razor edged blades on either side. The beauty of it is that it has a good sense of control by shifting the configuration of the edges slightly and Monty's never seen one before.

A fist full of him close in, assuming that I'll take to the air again. He seems surprised as the first one of him catches the blade in the jugular as it closes to the point where I can see the reds of his eyes. Monkey's don't really have 'whites' as such.

I take the next and the next with the weapon before he manages to panic and block the thing but by that point, I've whittled down his numbers and I can engage him on even terms. The blade shifts into a Jian and I go to work, carving through his surprised army like a gatling gun.

Desperate for rest, I break free and try to draw the stragglers towards another one of me.

* * *

Only one Monty? I'm insulted.

"What's next, Monty? Monkey Ninjas attack?" I laugh as I twist out of the way of some of his blows. I untie myself from gravity and ignore the normal direction of things. From the outside, it would look like I was executing an aerial cartwheel and changing direction several times in mid air.

I twist and flick beneath his guard and deliver a solid blow with the quivering palm. He smiles and flows under the impact of the blows, moving like liquid. He's skilfully changed his transformation without pausing. He's improved somewhat since we last sparred.

His body begins to flow up my arm. I smile slightly and reach through into his form, using his dharmas against him. If I can unpick his flow just slightly, I can…there!

Monty's distorted form snaps back into shape, throwing him off my arm and into the ground. I sail down to deliver a Mui Thai knee strike but he rolls. We begin our dance, moving like the wind and shifting like leaves in the storm. We miss beats in reality and slip into new dimensions. Part of the fight was even conducted in 2-D.

"Wait, is that Amy?" I asked, looking surprised and terrified.

Without even thinking, he turns to look over his shoulder. I laid him out with an iron fist attack.

* * *

The last of us come together, literally, combining into a column of smoke. The final pair of Fiskes collide beneath me with a sickening crunch. Maybe he'll win next time. It's definitely getting harder.

Right, now for a lecture from Immortal about Monty and I adding to the local superstitions about demons being a bad thing again.

* * *

Author's Note: If anyone can help me as to how I'm supposed to represent the plural forms of 'me' and 'him', I'd much appreciate it!

Fear not, answers on some issues will be forthcoming!


	30. Chapter 29

One hour post meridian, I reported to Professor Hurlbetter and was hooked up to all manner of machines. Polygraphs, neural output monitors, hart rate and breathing meters and something that measured my blood sugar. Apparently, they were trying to determine if I was the same Ron as they had records for.

Suffice to say that they're astonished that I'm not. My resting heart rate is almost twenty beats per minute short, I breathe a hell of a lot slower in an odd rhythm and my blood gas was way off. I also weigh a heck of a lot more than him and have almost an inch on him in height. Most of his measurements seem like logical extrapolation based on my weight and height when I was seventeen. It doesn't seem like a big thing, given that I'm supposed to be a fairly average guy who still relies on Kim doing the vast majority of the fighting.

"Now, Mr Stoppable, just relax. These first few questions are test questions to determine your baseline. What is your name in full, please?"

"Ronald Eugene Stoppable," I reply.

"How old are you?"

"Twenty two."

"Is your date of birth the sixteenth of June, nineteen eighty eight?"

"Yes"

"Now we're going to determine what your base responses are to stress. I want you to lie to the next question I ask you. Can you do that for me?"

"No," I reply flippantly.

He smiles faintly, "very well, Mr Stoppable. Just one more. Who was your first sexual conquest?"

"Kim Possible."

"He said you should lie, Ron," Kim cut in.

"I did, check the polygraph."

"What?" she demanded almost panicked.

"I'm sorry Miss Possible, according to the baseline, you really weren't his first," added Hurlbetter.

"Is this true, Ron?"

"Yes. I've never had sex with you, not yesterday, not today and before then I'd never met you," I tell her with no real emotion in my voice. I'm not being hard, simply factual. I have honestly never slept with her.

She begins to tear up, making small noises and runs out of the room. She's gone within seconds of me finishing talking.

"I take it you feel bad?" asks Hurlbetter with an insufferable level of smugness in his voice.

"You really think I want to make her cry? She was the first girl I ever fell in love with and I've noticed that she's actually human as far as I'm able to tell. Your lab assistant isn't however. I take it you're aware of that."

"I honestly don't know what you mean, Mr Stoppable," he replies flatly. Either the man has a serious poker face or he's a synthetic too; his heart rate didn't change in the slightest when I said that.

"Ask your questions then doc," I sigh, wanting this over. I want to go after Kim and I want to take the electrodes out from under my skin.

"First question: what have you been doing for the last five years, if you haven't been living with Miss Possible?"

"I thought I'd answered that already."

"I need to know if you truly believe that or if it's a construct or even if you're making it up as you go along."

"You think I'm making it up?"

"I really have no idea and would prefer to remain impartial," he replied, taking his tape recorder out of his pocket again and placing it on the little wheeled table between us, "now, if you'd like to begin with Kim's supposed death…"

* * *

I began to tell him, studying his reactions the whole time. There was nothing new to be told, given that I never really elaborate on what happened between the time I left for Japan and returned home. Not to Wade, not to the twins and not even to Bonnie during pillow-talk. No, the only one I tell about this is Anne and I'm never sure if she's actually hearing what I say anyway.

"Want to pass comment?" I ask finally. Hurlbetter hasn't moved in almost an hour, though he had Brockmeir bring me a cup of tea. I took a swig and pulled a face at the time.

"What?" she demanded.

"I'm not used to the watery way Americans tend to make it. Monty used to brew black tea in a manner he used to call 'fit for a bricklayer'," I relied in my very best English noble's accent and a stiff upper lip.

After that I went back to answering questions.

Hurlbetter pursed his lips before answering.

"You seem to be excluding details, Mr Stoppable. You haven't elaborated on why you went to Tokyo and what occurred there. Nor have you specified what you were doing in Japan and Tibet."

"Took oaths on the latter and I have no wish to discuss the events of Tokyo with anyone but especially you. No offence intended but I don't need to be told that the bad things I've done are not my fault," I reply flatly.

He just stares at me.

"Very well, I'd like to see you tomorrow so I can ask you further questions concerning your relationship with miss Possible. I'd like to determine where the gaps are in you memory. Perhaps then we can determine what stress has caused you to breed this fantasy."

"You think I'm mad, Doc?"

"Mr Stoppable, you haven't given me any reason to doubt it."

* * *

Two steps out of his office and I'm confronted by Brockmeir again. She looks annoyed at me and I'm not sure if I even care why. My current thoughts are on trying to get to talk to Kim without having to tell her more about my crappy past or my other relationships. I'd actually like to find out some of the happy times she had with other Ron.

"I hope you're happy with yourself, making Kim cry twice in as many days," she shoots at me, "if you're going to break up with her, just do it you cowardly bastard."

"Great, I'm getting relationship advice from a work of fiction," I mutter as I try and guide her out of my path with the back of my hand. She's having none of it.

"What did you just call me?"

"A work of fiction," I look right into her eyes, "you are a synthetic, and you know it. You are a bag of green gel filled with nerves and electro reactive proteins that mimic human motions and thought processes but you are not a human being. If you were, you'd have a soul that I could sense, an essence. You would have chi. Initially, I thought that maybe this was some form of elaborate set up, but this is real, even if I can't sense anything beyond a certain radius and I can't contact the outside. And more to the point, more than half of the people here are human and I'm not sensing that they are hiding anything. Hell, most of the synthetics aren't either. But then there's you."

"You're accusing me of being a robot and now you're saying I'm something evil too?" she's clearly outraged, but it tastes funny. Her pheromone reaction is off, though I remind myself that she's not human. That simple fact makes me feel deathly uneasy. Looks like a human, sounds like a human but doesn't 'feel' like a human. Just…wrong.

"When I figure out what's going on, I'm going to want you to answer a few questions."

"I'll look forward to it."

* * *

Yesterday I made a spectacle of myself so I was now noted as being one to avoid but watch. I love the paradoxes that drive normal people. I'm not superior to ordinary folk, I'm just not actually afraid anymore. I'd be asking about it. Yet another side effect of my masters' teachings.

I sit down in the open lotus position (I have trainers on) on the edge of the fountain in the middle of the campus lawns and clear my mind. I want to find Kim and I'm not in the mood for mindlessly searching an area I don't know.

I centre, expand it and keep expanding it. I tune my senses and play the waiting game as I sweep through a myriad of sensations trying to find one that will conclusively lead me to her. The scent of her hair is problematic as I didn't get a good sniff of her sweat so I'm not sure. There's a distinct tang of anger and betrayal coming from at least a dozen locations on campus. I don't know her class schedule so that's no help. For a moment I contemplate going back to the room to try to find it. That seems pointless. Kim is the sort of planner that would lead her to tape it to the inside of a binder or something like that.

I sigh slightly, the troublesome feelings of anger and loss creeping into my mind. I feel them and use them as signposts. I have to make progress with her or figure out what the hell is going on with the limited bubble of senses I'm trapped in.

Idly I sift through some of the content of the conversations around me.

There.

A mention of Kim. Red-head, crying.

Smoothies. That sounds like Kim.

Monique's name being mentioned. Yep, that sounds like them.

I get up and dash to the source of the mildly malicious gossip.

"Bonnie! How nice to see you!" I cry, bounding up to her in a few smooth motions.

"What do you want, Stoppable?"

"Is that any way to greet a guy who knows you like…" I lean into her ear to finish of the question without ruining her oh-so-important reputation. She instantly turns red and looks at me in total shock and I run my tongue over my teeth to add emphasis.

"Wha…"

"Don't worry, Bonnie, that's not going anywhere. Now, I need to know where Kim and Monique are and I heard you talking about them."

"You were eavesdropping?"

"Nope, I was listening out for something that might help me find her. You've never really learned to hunt for things have you? Now where did you see them, bearing in mind that I have no idea where everything is on this campus?"

After a few moments, she told me what I needed, having pulled the pad of my finger across my teeth to make her sweat.

* * *

"Just who we don't want to see right now, hmmm girlfriend?" Monique cuts in as I wall through the little food plaza-thing in the middle of the student's union building. She's as beautiful as ever, though not quite as pretty as the last time I saw her in the real world, laden down with twins and shining like a black nova.

I smile at the thought. She spent a lot of time with Wade but had buried her sorrows and a case of mild shock from her rude awakening in the company of most of the men in the resistance. Last time I checked, Steve Barkin himself was on the list of possible fathers. Guess we might know once they're born.

"Look, Kim, I need to find out who I'm dealing with and what sort of life you and the other me, the real me had together. I want to know about the good times so I can be happy for him and you. And I'm more than willing to tolerate Miss-Thang, here as long as she doesn't expect to win in a battle of attitude."

"What you just call me, Babyboy?" demands the molasses godess, eyes flaring.

"Not the time, Mon," Kim cuts in and I'm instantly thankful. She smiles a little bitter smile at me and all I want to know is what I'm denying her, "what do you want to know?"

"Tell me about our first date," I ask, not sure if I'm trying to gain insight or just live vicariously through the lucky bastard for a little while.

* * *

Author's Notes: The tenses are a little screwy here and I freely apologise. I was having issues with drifting into past tense while i was writing it and my Beta reader has been involved in other projects recently. I struggled with it for most of 30 minutes but in the end just left it to your intelligence. 


	31. Chapter 30

Airtime.

I used to hate it but now that I actually know what I'm doing instead of making it up as I go along, plunging miles from the sky towards the ground is a wonderfully peaceful experience. I turn off all my comm-links so that even Wade can't reach me.

So many memories of jumping out of planes to try to keep up with Kim come back to me. If I'd had training, maybe I wouldn't have constantly felt like I was falling to my death. Tonight, the order of the day is HALO. I'm plummeting more than a mile, breathing compressed air from a tank strapped across my ass. Either side of my parachute, which I'm going to open once the digital altimeter in my face plate hits six hundred feet, below the safe limit admittedly but I'm worried about scans, are two more tanks of air. Those are to get me to land without setting off any of the detection buoys. Under my dry-suit is a set of combat gear, disguised as a tuxedo.

I'm playing James Bond tonight.

Once I make it ashore, I have a mission to do but for now, I just have a rapidly dropping number, the whistle of the wind and a lot of fast approaching water for company. Bliss.

The chute opens and as always I'm shocked at the force that the switch has on my neck. Once again, I come close to cracking my skull on the tanks as they snap together on my back. The parachute ride is brief, once I've slowed to save speeds, I drop free into the water.

Now comes the interesting part. Scuba is easy under normal circumstances. In the dark with nothing but a crude sonar imager to guide you, it's somewhat more exciting. That combined with the fact that I'm probably going to have to deal with some kind of super-villain robot shark or something down here makes the whole thing more of a chore than it probably should be.

* * *

It turns out that it was a giant mutant octopus with a sort of modified carnivorous barnacles stuck to its plating. I'll never now where people get such strange ideas for mutating sea life. At least DNAmy had a source of inspiration in the form of her cuddlebuddies where her mutant freaks were concerned. She was about the only one I ever saw mess with mammals though. Everyone seems to try their hand with sea creatures.

Regardless, I managed to deal with it, how, we needn't linger. Lets just say I came prepared.

I stomp happily up the beach in a little lee behind an outcrop. They seem to have built it to hide the sewage outlet for the house. I stink, but thankfully, that'll all stick to the outer skin of the armour if I'm careful. I strip down and begin checking my gear. Multi-tool, laser cutter, computer spike, weapons and of course an Invitation. Yes, it does need a capitol letter. This thing was hard to acquire. Senior island is the last place on earth were the rich can hide to avoid the real world. Here, their chips don't function and they're forced to drown their sorrows in luxury. Poor things.

That said, basic economics are still what makes the world go round, even if Drakken has had a lot to say about some of the poorer areas. We need funding and I think I know how to get it. All I need to do is seduce one woman and then get her to seduce one man.

Simple?

Who said it would be simple?

Fun?

Oh hell yes!

* * *

As I walk up the beach towards the path so I can pretend to be a straggled from one of the boats, contemplate the nature of this plan.

We need the money that Senor Senior Senior can provide.

We know he has no love of Drakken. The existence of this island is purely to irk him.

He would probably welcome me if I made my presence known and give us whatever we need.

I'm about to seduce a socialite, then convince her to seduce Junior and get him to hand over a large hunk of money for this project.

Why?

Because Senior is a villain and he's going to get right onboard with the project if we show some cunning. Plus, he's likely very bored. I think the drama will provide a distraction.

Interesting thing about the new order is that Senior finally got himself some guards. Not laser sentries but real, god's honest guards. In this case, German mercenaries clad in silver cyber-enhanced armour like something out of _Moon Beyond Ios_. Unfortunately, this also means that they're very resilient.

Why is this a problem? Well, I don't exactly look like a European rich kid. No amount of grooming is going to change the fact that I'm a slightly pasty, freckled blonde guy with a Jewish nose. They regard my invitation and look at me dubiously. The name on it is one of the many fake identities I've been forced to buy off Big Daddy Brotherson since this fiasco started. Son of a Croat mafia don. Not the best fake ID but about as believable as they ever get when you're already well known.

The valet begins to ask me questions. Then he points at my shoes. I knew they were a bad idea the moment I remembered Immortal's words on the subject.

I'm not wearing shoes. I'm wearing a pair of black suede trainers with bright yellow piping. The idea is that people notice those who stand out.

"I'm afraid, Sir, I cannot allow you inside wearing those trainers. Perhaps the master will be able to provide you with alternative footwear. I'll call to check."

"You know what?" I ask, then tap into some of Arahat's teachings on how the mind works, "Trainers are cool," I announce, waving my hand at him like something out of _Moon Beyond Ios._

"Trainers are cool," he mutters, putting the phone back on its stand.

"Enjoy the party."

"Enjoy the party."

"Move along."

"Move along."

* * *

I love a good ball. They're just a working example of the first rule of infiltration; if you can't hide, bluster.

I begin by swooping past some of the help and homing in on the first face I recognise.

"Hirohito-San, what an honour it is to see you again," I bow very slightly and smile. Anyone who's ever met a guy this important isn't likely to call him San unless they really know they are due respect.

"The honour is all mine, Sir," he replied graciously as I move past him, nodding to his entourage. He's the head of some software conglomerate that's the Japanese equivalent of Microsoft. Never actually seen one of his products working but Wade buzzing in the back of my mind tells me that they're almost uniquely cross-system stable. Whatever that means.

_Ok, your next victim is to the left, Reinhardt Van Der Schmitt, one of the heirs to a major Pharmaceutical companies. Say you met him during the Brouge conference; according to Big Daddy, he was so stoned that week he'll never remember._

Thank you Wade.

Win the men, you prove you're an alpha, the women will follow. Simple process; hard to implement. On the plus side, I have Wade googling everything I hear from these guys so I'm never lost for conversation. And when they get things wrong, I can feel and radiate smug, which only helps my situation.

Eventually, I make my way around the room and engage Junior in conversation. Nice guy, but conveniently dim, especially as I'm making a point of flirting with his lady-friend in subtext. She's also convenient, though that's because she is bright. Smart women have a lot of problems finding men who are a challenge because most guys dumb themselves down and simper.

Regardless, a little bit of clever talking later and she's putty in my hands. It's weird how it's possible to game a woman but I'm basically following a formula I learned from a DVD specifically for this mission. I've used this successfully in the field a number of times, but never with armed guards to play with. Anyway, a few pieces of choice bullshit; the cube visualisation, a palm reading, a few stories about friends with unfaithful partners and who's to blame…more of the same really.

Junior seems equally captivated by the crap I'm spinning, as was the intention. Eventually, when I start trying to get the woman away from him, he's actually suggesting we go off together. I'll never understand how this stuff works.

As we walk away, I start getting the girl's dossier from Wade.

_Euro trash is about the right word. Father owns the majority share in a company that farms its construction out to eastern European labourers in order to maximise overheads. She's one of those legendary kiss-and-tell girls and is probably here gaming Junior in much the same way you're gaming her. According to the media, her bin interests are horses, clothes, French grapes and her cat, Phoenix. Yes, I know, dumb name. Privately, she recently had a genuine fling with a banker named Walace but he's history and she still sleeps with her Otterfly cuddlebuddy. _

Biting back a stiff feeling of betrayal, I start using a thousand wasted hours of Kim's babbling about those stupid plush toys to my advantage.

* * *

Author's Note: I keep adding layers to this story and one of the later chapters gives away one of the endings to one of the other layers...Now that's complex fiction when the author can't keep track of it all! 


	32. Chapter 31

Darkness.

Darkness with a liquid sensation behind it.

I try to move. My hands are bound and I'm secured to the floor by some kind of chain through a hoop.

I open my mouth to scream but liquid flows in. Water.

I'm drowning in the darkness.

I force my eyes open.

In the light beyond the darkness, I can see two figures, kissing. One a man with a side parting and chiselled jaw and the other…green. A green woman. Behind them is a huge blob I can't resolve, just like I can't resolve them any more after a few moments.

Then…blackness.

* * *

There is something in the dark. A beep. A hideously annoying beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

The more I concentrate on it, the louder it seems to get. Faster too. Then I stop thinking about it for a minute and it slows down again. I wonder what it is.

Wait a minute. Rhythmic beep. Heart-monitor.

Still with the water. I panic for a second, thrashing against my restraints. They aren't there anymore and my arm strikes something metal, maybe the frame of the bed.

"Ron?" I hear from the darkness. It's a sweet tone, full of concern. I'm trying desperately to place the owner of that voice but I can't.

"Water," I manage to force out of dry lips. You'd think a guy who almost drowned wouldn't have dehydration issues. A moist towel is wiped across my lips and the relief is overwhelming for a moment. I'd say it was better than sex but the sensations don't really compare to each other.

I take a crack at rising to a seated position but a strong, narrow hand on my bruised ribs prevents that. Seconds later a whirring sound heralds my rising to a seated position. I must be in a hospital bed.

I crack open my eyes, knowing that sudden exposure will cause complete reaction in my eyes. There's nothing for it. Walk it off fellas, I think pointedly at my eyes.

A mane of auburn hair and a pair of emotionless green eyes swim into focus, sat on a small plastic chair parallel to my ankles. It's Kim and man does she look pissed.

"What am I doing in the hospital?" I ask uncertainly, worrying that my days couldn't get any weirder.

"I think that should be obvious. You tried to kill yourself. If Wade hadn't wimped out on your little plot, you would have been."

"Okay…" I let stumble out. I'm not entirely sure if I'm ok with playing along with this one, "why did I do that again?"

"I can only imagine it's something to do with getting me back. Your fake villain scheme won't hold water here though Ron, or should I say, Ronin?"

Now I'm officially lost. Last thing I remember is being shot. She's angry and that makes a glance at her thoughts singularly unhelpful so I have no idea what's going on.

"Ronin? Hmmm…cool name. Dishonoured Samurai," I think out loud, knowing that it'll draw some response.

"The romantic hero thing really didn't impress me, Ron, though I'm grateful for you saving me from your robot on that roof. I'm going to go tell your parents that their 'dead' son is awake now," she announces suddenly, getting up and making for the door. I make no attempt to stop her, knowing that I don't have enough information to try.

"And Ron, you're sick. I won't be able to see you after tomorrow for a while, but once I come back off my honeymoon, I'm going to make sure you get the best psychiatric help the world has to offer."

Great, more quality time with Hurlbetter.

* * *

I spend an interesting afternoon, first with my parents and then with the police, the FBI and a dozen other agencies, including GJ, some of which I've never even heard of.

My parents seem relieved about the fact that I'm alive, despite faking my own death earlier this week. Maybe it's my mystified look or the fact that I honestly have no idea what they're talking about that prevents them from asking me why I might have faked my own death. If they did, I'd have nothing for them.

My dad at least seems happy that I'm alive, though I think his heart may not take another strike like that. Mum seems more like her normal self, seemingly blaming my habit of dating shiksas for my fall into crime and super-villainy. I look at her as if she's insane until she shuts up. I somehow don't think that a nice Jewish girl would prevent megalomania. Hell, most of the 'nice' Jewish girls she's introduced me to over the years would drive a man to such things. Maybe that's just my mother's taste in these things, I don't know.

The police are more excitable. They want to know how the Ronin suit works. They want to know how the Deathray suit works. They want to know how I built my lair. They want to know how to find this 'Wade' person, even going so far as to use air quotes. They want to know if I understand that I've endangered the life of one of the world's foremost neurosurgeons. They begin laughing when I ask who that is.

"You're pulling my chain, right boy?" demands a heavy set FBI man with a thick Irish brogue and a bad hairpiece. I just smile at him mildly.

"Imagine that I have amnesia and that I really have no idea what the words Ronin and Deathray mean and that I have no idea why you're asking me all these questions."

"Well, let's see. You constructed a sixteen foot mechanical war suit and had it attack you during your ten year highschool reunion…"

"Wait," I cut him off, "did you say, ten year? How is that possible, I'm 22?"

"No, Mr Stoppable, you're 27. Anyway, there you faked the death of Ronald Stoppable and fought a fake duel with the armour, presumably piloted by this 'Wade' character with the aid of the Twin Possible. From there, you staged another battle atop the Middleton Central Bank, after having engaged in a drawn out fight with Miss Possible.

"Then you bound yourself into a pool of water so that Kim Possible could rescue you and thereby you would achieve whatever it is that you were doing. I think that covers all the crazy thus far."

* * *

Apparently, I'm some kind of cyber-enhanced Ninja. There's been no mention of my actual powers, save for a short jolt of invisibility and some enhanced strength. This is mildly confusing, but then again, the other Rons didn't have powers either.

The thing I'm not understanding, is that if I'm public enemy number one, suit or not, why is there only one guard and I'm not chained to the bed. This seems monumentally dumb. It's like locking Shego in a normal prison. It just won't work.

I sit alone, meditating, my naked buttocks sticking to the polished tile floor. Centre, open, spread, feel, retrieve, live. All the basic stages, now let's see what's around.

The guard is slightly overweight and that's his sixth cup of coffee. He's going to the bathroom soon. The nurse as apparently been checking me out while I was unconscious because she's checking her makeup and smells of sex pheromones while looking over my chart. It's somewhat disconcerting listening to a woman you've never even seen trying out your surname for size. Maybe she's one of those chicks who dig the bad-boys. Where have I heard that before I wonder?

The door is locked with a central column barrel in the middle of the doorknob. Easy to disarm. I'm pretty much out of here already, and I won't even need to fight. Just send a fistful of copies of myself out and recombine as the one that gets away.

The room suddenly lights up. I wheel around and find a pair of small searchlights pointed in at me. They belong to a small VSTOL aircraft that's virtually silent, hovering outside the window. It's the same basic design as Wade's airsleds so I'm guessing they're from the same creator. This one seems to be unarmed, not what I would expect from a deadly terrorist like myself.

* * *

In the end, the simplest plan of action I could come up with was to shift into a rat and crawl through the vent system to the roof where the sled was parked. It was an uneventful trip, save for having to bitchslap another, larger rodent who thought I was moving into his territory. I'm always amazed that martial arts still work in non-human forms.

I drop out onto the roof and scurry to the edge of the sled, allowing my flesh to twist back into its original shape. I've seen footage of the process; it isn't pretty. After a moment, the canopy of the Sled slides back and I see Wade's face on the monitor, cornrows and all.

"How did you get up here so fast? I only just finished hacking the camera system."

"I did the rat thing. What the hell is going on?" I asked as my testicles began to rise painfully in the cold.

"There's a Ronin suit under the seat in the Ninjet, put it on and we can work out what we need to do next. I'm thinking we may have to break up a wedding."

"Right, this may sound crazy, but I have no idea what's going on. I'm not even sure if I'm from this world and I'm definitely not the Ron you think I am."

At that moment, another voice cuts through from behind me. I spin around, finding Wade stood there in a white suit. He looks buff.

"That, would be because you aren't of this world, Ronald," he announced in his Michael Clarke Duncan tones, gravel giving way beneath his bass. I just look at him and then back at the other Wade, who interestingly, looks a lot older, and wonder what the hell is going on.

* * *

The discussion that follows is nothing short of surreal. Wade keeps bashing buttons on what looks like an oversized Kimmunicator and telling me stuff about the world I'm currently in. Apparently, I've been set on a chain of dimension shifts, through worlds where things went differently. Something to do with quantum theory and the many-worlds principal of universal physics.

Regardless, I keep shunting into the lives of other versions of myself, why we don't know.

Apparently, this Ron Stoppable is a vigilante hero having abandoned Kim three days before their wedding six years earlier because of fear for her life after some villain nearly killed both of them. Rufus apparently sacrificed himself to save them.

The man Kim is due to marry, is Raymond Beam, Deathray, who tried to kill me because of a sick obsession with being the most important thing in Kim's life, which is something of an ego boost. When I mentioned this, both Wades told me to focus.

Historically, I'm due to visit MrDrP's lab and find the Deathray construction systems and a selection of clones and then try to break up the wedding, though it's Wade who actually succeeds at that. Apparently I get brought down by Global Justice two blocks from the church then assist in fighting Ray.

I'm confused about this, simply because I'm more than capable of handling a small army. It's then pointed out to me that this world's Ron is not me. He doesn't kill, ever. Crap.

* * *

Hammering through the stratosphere in the Ninjet, I can't help but feel that this is one of the oddest things I've ever done. I'm going to crash a wedding. Dressed as a Ninja. I have the Lotus Blade strapped to my back, which is a concern because I know the damn thing is beneath the skin on my right arm. I can feel it.

I've been made to promise that I won't cause any loss of life in doing this and that I'm to cause a distraction while Wade gets to the chapel and forces Ray to summon Deathray. Great. Life just doesn't get any better than this.

I start opening up chakras so that I can get my energy flow moving and realise something. I can sense a hell of a lot of synthetics. It was the same when I was in college. Sod this, I want answers.

The canopy of the sled slides back and I stand up. Wade pilots the little remote controlled craft out from under me and I set myself into a freefall. I'm really not in the mood for messing around, especially since I have a cloaking device, apparently. As the ground approaches, I ease off my grasp on gravity, twist some of my downward motion sideways and hurtle along the ground at a height of eight feet. Quantum Wade warned me against using my abilities but I really can't see the point right now.

I cut my flight and flick myself up onto my feet, landing with enough force to crack the pavement. I stand there for a second after cancelling the cloak and pick out the synthetics in the crowd of approaching security. Knowing that it's a difficult trick to notice, I reach through the seams of reality and pull forth some shuriken. Bleed, gooey, bleed; I smile to myself.

The nearest synthetic is a copy of that smug bastard, Will Du.

I'm going to enjoy this.

* * *

Author's Notes: Anyone who didn't heed my instruction to read Reunion by G-go, congratulations, you just found out the core of the plot. Seriously, go read it! It's a fairly predicable 'back in the game' story that anyone who's ever read a comic will recognize but I say without deriding others that I think it's the best written single piece of fiction on this site, my own definitely included. 


	33. Chapter 32

Demonites.

I hurl myself backwards, adapting my motions like a leaf twisting on the wind and come to a halt with a foot on the wall and another on the floor. For a moment, I really wish some of the Paragons were here. Well, the heavy hitters like Immortal, Arahat or Prophet. I don't think Dreamer would have been much help right now.

There are three places that you can almost guarantee that you will find people willing to summon demons. Amongst the insane, the incredibly rich and covens of teenage witches. The insane are self explanatory, the rich bore easily and have the funds to find the materials needed and teenagers are stupid and rarely believe that it will actually work.

Right now, in the bowels of Senior's island, I'm not entirely surprised that there are demonites on the loose. The least minions of hell are a fairly common feature in the lives of those who actually know how to fight them. I'm really just sad for Senior because I'm assuming that he had no idea what was going on down here.

The lead one looks like a twisted cross between a wolf and a lobster with a pair of claws either side of its tooth filled mouth. It lunges towards me across the giggling body of Junior's paramour and snaps at the air that I had occupied moments before.

I lash out with the Lotus, unspooling it from the holes in my arm in the form of a set of atomically sharp chains. They pass cleanly through it and out the other side but it still keeps coming. Damn it, I'm actually going to have to exorcise the place. That means preparation, which means I need to dissipate these two in order to get the time to do so.

Or I can try and figure out which of three hundred plus people in that party, plus maybe a hundred and fifty others on the island are the contractors of these things and kill them. Not the best way of dealing with it, but it would stick. That said, that would require me to meditate, which would require me to dissipate these two or find some way to contain them.

I opt to abandon thoughts of doing anything fancy and allow the Lotus to take a shape that it hasn't for a long time. The gold capped black iron staff weighs heavy in my hands as I leap forward with a cry on my lips:

"Feel old Monkey's cudgel!"

I've never worked it out and Immortal and Arahat both seemed to lack anything to say on the subject, but there's something distinctly spiritual about beating the tar out of something with a stick. The cudgel meets the side of the demonite's, for want of a better word, head and it's catapulted across the room. It strikes the opposing wall with great force. Trying to press my advantage, I strike a downward blow onto the skull of the other one and press deeper into the room. There's a lot of ritual paraphernalia scattered on the floor and an almost cartoonishly inept pentacle scrawled on the floor. Either this was a hash job or someone just told the enactor part of how to do this.

Weighting my options, and knowing that the things were circling to strike me at the same time, I smash the biggest thing amongst the detritus, a sealed vase. Fortunately, it's a good call, spraying ichor across me as the blow lands. Not sure what the hell was in the thing but the demonites both dissolve into smoke.

* * *

Dragging my hysterical new friend behind me, I plunge back into the party. Heads turn in my direction. I'm coated in viscera, the right arm of my tux is shredded where I summoned the Lotus and I'm dragging a hysterical rich kid behind me. Oh, and I look like Ron Stoppable again.

"Where is Senor Senior, Senior?" I demand of the nearest guest. The music cuts off and half a dozen serious looking gentlemen begin pushing their way through the crowds towards me.

"What is the meaning of this?" echoes the wonderful, rich voice of Senior over the still room. I'm a guy and I melt a little inside when he talks, I can imagine what it must do to the ladies.

"I'm afraid that I'm to be the bearer of bad tidings, Senior. It seems you have a little infestation on your island. I just saved Juniors bit of skirt from being eaten!"

"Father!" the retch wails at the sound of this. He comes running across and relieves me of the girl. I couldn't be happier for them. I'm just preying that he isn't the contractor.

"An infestation? Come this way, master Stoppable, it seems that there is some explaining in order."

* * *

"So," he rumbles in that wonderful bass voice of his, "you are telling me that you came here to gain access to my billions in order to fund a rebellion against Drakken by seducing my son's girlfriend and then having her do your dirty work for you?"

"That's about the size of it," I admit, looking at the scotch he has presented me with through the side of the glass. The glass is worth more than my parent's house and the liquid inside is like warm brown velvet.

"Master Stoppable, Ron, I hope you are not offended when I say that I find that sort of thinking down right deplorable."

"I thought you'd like it."

"Yes, it is quite villainous indeed," he smiles at me, "you certainly thought about how best to get an old man on board."

"Unfortunately, there is an issue on this island. Someone here has summoned demonites."

"What, pray tell, are demonites, my boy?"

"A demonite," I begin given that his reaction has shown that he is too sceptical to be the contractor, "are the weakest form of spiritual entity that it is possible to summon and bind with magic. They make solid, if stupid foot soldiers and lacking internal anatomy, they're very difficult to destroy. And they're bound to the one who summoned and bound them in the first place, meaning that someone here has control of a number of very powerful entities."

"This is truly fascinating, but I have no reason to believe in magic of the like."

"Dude," I say, leaning forward, "you've met Monkey Fist and you've probably got as good an idea of what I can do as Drakken does. You know magic exists. Now, any idea who here may be interested in trafficking with demons?"

* * *

I really wish that the Paragons were here. That's all I can think as I try to settle and sense the whole of the island complex. In fairness, I can almost guarantee where they will be. People always summon crap in basements. Why, I'll never know; its probably a combination of being hard to discover and a feeling of being closer to hell. Which is stupid because hell would be better described as being sideways from where we are as opposed to down.

For a moment, I contemplate stepping into the realms of the dead and finding directions to the local demon king but I put that aside, the demonites are most likely summoned from the dregs of his realm and he's not likely to have much idea what's going on.

That said, I'm not even sure which hell these things were summoned from. Gah.

I open up my mind and try to sift through the emotions of those around me on the island. It's the only real signpost I can think of. Someone is either going to be angry about being thwarted or excited about successfully binding something.

Wait, no. On the very edge of my perception, I can smell energy. The strange, difficult to identify type of energy that comes from spiritual activities. The thing last night was a nexus but I smashed only the guardian bind. The whole of the island has been rigged like a giant pentacle. Seven sides. Orcus?

This is not good. As Kim would have put it, So the Drama.

* * *

Author's Note: yes, this is the first time you've had a piece of completely made up detail in this story where religion or the occult is concerned. The reason for this is two-fold. Firstly, I don't like delving into these materials too closely and it's really been a long time since I trained as an exorcist, so my knowledge here is a little patchy. Second, I'm not keen on the idea of writing anything factual about something I actually believe functions and that people are vain and stupid enough to try. 


	34. Chapter 33

"So Drakken and Shego are now married and working on a wildlife show?" I ask incredulously. This is news to me, but apparently in the perfect Ron's world, this is the case. Kim just nods silently at me, "And not the ruler of the world and his evil chief of secret police?"

Her eyebrow raises for a second, "Where do you get this stuff from?" she asks finally.

"I come from a world where you're dead, remember. We never went to Bueno Nacho headquarters and I never admitted my feelings because you weren't there. I barely managed to destroy the Middleton micro-transmitter and buy use some time. Brick and I went to Bueno Nacho HQ to rescue Bonnie a few days later though."

"You rescued Bonnie?"

"I would have done the same for you, Kim. Hell, if it were you, it would've been my idea!"

That seems to placate her a little. I'm beginning to think that she's at least willing to accept the possibility that I'm not making this up or painfully deluded and most of what she's taken as personal is simply the fact that I haven't known this new her.

We continue in this way for a while, with occasional interjections from Monique.

* * *

Brockmeir shows up after a while.

"I hear you've been terrorising some of our cheer-squad, Ron," she announces as she pulls a chair around and straddles it, leaning on the back.

My eyes narrow involuntarily as I look at her. It's not really my fault, synthetics are a bane of the resistance and a deadly foe when they get going. They're the reason we keep the dogs around all the time. Brockmeir isn't even a sleeper, she knows what she is and knows what she's here for.

"I'd rather not have to talk to you, Belinda, you understand."

"Ron!" Kim cuts my off, "you may have your opinions but Belinda is my friend and in know she's human because I've seen her bleed. Now lay off."

"Sorry, Ronnie, looks like you've been outvoted," Monique chimes in, almost overjoyed at the chance to irk me. I'm not entirely sure, but I'm going out on a limb that even synthetics can be possessive.

"Mon, why don't you go and keep Felix company? He's probably lonely and horny while both of you are sat here," I suggest with a vicious smile on my face.

"Oh no you didn't!" she growls, rising to her feet. I flick my eyes to the side and check on Brockmeir's response. Out and out shock, good.

"Kim! How could you tell him about that? You know this boy can't keep a secret!" she continues ranting at a shocked looking Kim. I think that I wasn't supposed to know this.

"Mon, I didn't tell him anything about this. Not ever. We even had a fight about it because he knew I was keeping something from him," Kim's desperate answer comes back.

"And that was the other me without the crazy powers of observation," I chip in helpfully.

"You knew about this and you didn't tell me?!!" demands a semi-frantic Belinda.

"Well, not so much…"

"Hey, lay off her, Bitchmeir! This is my deal and I'm the one that Felix loves! This isn't Kim's fault!"

I put a firm hand on Kim's and make it clear that she shouldn't interfere as a slap turns into punching, which turns into hair pulling and then wrestling. We watch, my amusement peaking as the pair of synthetics begin tearing shreds out of each other over a human boy in a wheelchair. If the Felix I knew in high school could see this. That said, even I'm finding this exciting.

Kim looks between me and the fight, her face alternating between anger and shock. Then the unexpected happens, Belinda, in a rage, stabs Monique with a fork. Green goo begins to ooze from the wound and Monique begins to convulse and panic. Brockmeir bolts for the door, realising what she's done.

Fortunately for Monique, synthetic exoskeleton isn't technically alive so I can cause it to knit back together. I hold her as the shock of finding out that she isn't real begins to rock through her. Stroking her hair, I try my best to soothe her, but being fake is something I have no experience with. I've soothed the passing of a lot of synthetics but I've never done first aid on one that wasn't aware of their nature.

After a few moments, I look up to find Kim stabbing herself in the arm with a fork, trying desperately to draw blood. Poor girl, it looks like I've caused a lot of her preconceptions about the world to come crashing down.

A moment later, I realise something terrible.

"Kim, head in the game! Where's Felix's room? Now!"

"What? Wha?"

"Synthetics that fail their programmed primary mission often go haywire and kill their target. I'm guessing jilted synthetics can go the same way! Room number and floor!"

"Third floor, B corridor, room six," Monique cuts in, "please bring my baby-boy back to me!" she screams helplessly as I sprint out of the food hall, passing cleanly through some of the tables.

* * *

I have no idea of the capabilities of my opponent. Monique is a simple Mk I synthetic, a goo-bag, but I'm not sure about Belinda. She could be a Mk II or even a Bebe hybrid. She has the home ground advantage and is probably angry to the point of being irrational. That and I've got to think about saving Felix's legless ass while I'm doing this.

I pound up the stairs of the dorm building, praying in patchy Hebrew that I'm not too late. I take stairs three at a time and move with a good deal of flow. I've cracked open every energy source I have that's compatible with my mundane skills.

I slide along the floor, trying to halt my forward motion as I reach the doorframe. Each of my still, constant heartbeats sounds like backing music to the sobbing and smashing noises inside. I was at most three minutes behind Belinda.

The door disintegrates beneath my fingers, shattering into a million tiny wood fibres and crumpling to the floor. Inside I take a moment to regard the scene. The room has been trashed. Many of Felix's possessions lie shattered around the place and there are dents in the walls. He is sat, lolling in his chair, obviously concussed but still alert, blood trickling from his nose. The cybertronic arms of his chair hang limply, draped on the floor, lacking control.

Belinda is stood in the middle of this madness. Her eyes are flaring with anger and she's got something heavy, what looks like a wrought iron doorstop in her hands. She turns to me moments after the door collapsed to dust and stares at me with utter hatred.

"You did this!" she cries with rage mingled with regret. What she's done is starting to dawn on her.

"It's over, Belinda," I say calmly. There's nowhere for her to go and I'm pretty sure that she's aware of my abilities. We stand there as the seconds tick by, "Belinda, put that down and come outside. I'll make sure Felix is looked after by the hospital and you can turn yourself over to the police. It'll be ok. I won't tell him why you did this. Not the truth. Ok?"

"You're making a deal with a synthetic Stoppable? Why? I disgust you!"

"You're still a person, Belinda, and so are Kim and Felix and I'm looking out for them too. Now go!"

I point out of the room and she shuffles past me, running away in tears. Her madness spent, she's a wreck.

* * *

I'm forced to do a lot more that night than I would have hoped. Felix required medical treatment so I carried him to the training hospital in the centre of the campus. I called Monique and sat with her, explaining that she wasn't any less real, she just wasn't the original Monique. I'm not sure what that means in the current setting, but time will tell. I sooth Felix to sleep by flooding his body with endorphins and then I'm forced to calm Monique in the same way. I move her chair beside his bed and clasp their hands together.

I returned to our room to find Kim sat on the edge of the bed, staring into space. She seemed so shocked about the whole thing. A fairly crude job has been done of bandaging her arm where she stabbed it.

I waste no time in undressing her, putting her through the shower and dressing her for bed. A pair of fluffy pink pyjamas and a clean, well tied dressing make her more comfortable and a cup of hot chocolate milk seems to make the whole thing a little easier for her. I leave her there for a few minutes while I shower, brush my teeth and return wearing a monstrous pair of blue pyjamas, emblazoned with the Fearless Ferret logo.

She smiles as I approach, taking her chin in my hand and guiding it onto my shoulder. She shudders as I stroke her hair and lower her onto the bed. Her hands begin to play as she leans in to kiss me but I catch them in one of my paws. This really isn't the time or the place. I kiss her a little, then pull her close, making sure that she knows that I'm not going to leave her alone. Eventually, she relaxes and falls asleep in my arms, curled up like a little girl with her father.

For a moment, I truly regret the fact that I'm not really this Ron.

* * *

Author's Note: Not a monster chapter but I really like the tenderness at the end. The man has a lot of love in him. 


	35. Chapter 34

The first dart strikes Du in the forearm and the second catches him just below the voice box. The green slime gushes for a second and then stops, replaced with something more akin to blood. Mark II units. This makes things more interesting.

"Hmmm…Upgrades," I mutter as I throw myself over the surging front line and begin dancing on heads. Most of the people below me are unable to resist the urge to shield their faces so my progress is mostly unhindered. I decide to go for a balanced defence and reform my body so that both sides are the front. I'm effectively two copies of Ron Stoppable stood back to back and fused in the middle now. Still dancing on heads, I begin lashing out at the batons, stun-sticks and other weapons being thrust in my direction. Smiling slightly, I adjust my aim to take out every synthetic I can.

Thinking on my feet, I call out the Lotus and shift it into a trio of bladed centre heavy boomerangs like the ones from the Vampire Hunter TV series and send them spinning through the crowds, scything limbs clean off and destroying synthetic heads.

At a fierce grating noise behind me, I see a number of synthetics throwing themselves together and their exoskeletons beginning to knit into one giant one. Slowly, they begin to form into a massive version of Eric, the dusky skinned young man who tormented me after Kim's death.

"Hello loser," he says triumphantly.

"This is new," I mutter under my breath as his arm reforms into a gigantic psuedopod and hammers down at me. I roll to the side and drag the 'lotus' blade from the scabbard on my back, slashing great gashes into the tentacle as it retracts. I dodge another blow, still willing the mindblades to cut through the crowds of charging synthetics and leave nasty wounds on the humans. As the third massive blow narrowly misses me, I roll to my knees beside the white clad form of Wade.

"Please say you're here to help!" I gasp. I get my answer moments later when a GJ officer lunges through him to get at me.

"Sorry, they can't even see me if I don't want them to. I'm just here to give you information on that Mark III synthetic."

"Mark III? Why am I never told about these things?"

"They came out just after you disappeared. One of out bases in Jersey had a problem with one."

"Problem?"

"Totally annihilated. On the plus side, they did figure out that its weak against the stunners. Not that that helps you overtly."

"Great. Got any more good news to share with me?"

"Yeah, you need to be in the church in about two minutes. The other me just started breaking it up."

"Great!"

I dodge away from another blow. I've had enough of this. Calling in the four blade wheels, I recombine them into the Lotus blade. Then I let it break down into thousands of tiny rods, each made of but three thousand atoms. Like a shoal of fish, they spread to take the force of its next blow, then turn end on and burrow into its exoskeleton. Letting them link together into a web, I push the giant back and then clench the web like a fist. With a great tearing noise, I pull away much of its armour and am drenched in syntho-gel. Still it heals and I fly backwards slightly, drawing the web back into the cloud form that it had been in.

Waving my hands like a sorcerer, I make it dance and play like a shoal and then fling my hands forward. A narrow column of these tiny barbs floods into the giant synthetic and bunches into a ball in his chest. For a moment he looks at me confused as I grin and the rods, like the fish they're modelled after bust out in all directions, reducing his exoskeleton to vapour.

Taking flight slightly, I begin to cannonball towards the church as Wade calls after me, "use mundane looking tactics!"

* * *

The church doors stand open, those inside frozen in shock as I pound up the stairs. A gigantic mechanoid war-suit stands at the altar next to a shocked looking Kim in a wedding dress, aiming the primary weapon on its right arm at a small black figure.

She looks so beautiful but somehow wrong. There seems to be less spirit in her, less energy all over. Still, white dresses look the business on pale redheads.

Wasting no time, I hurl myself in front of the smaller target, pulling the Lotus into a coherent medieval shield for the first time in years. A plasma blast similar to the yield of a Diablo cannon forces me to slide back on the floor, keeping what I assume is Wade safe from harm.

Without speaking, I shift the blade into a heavy axe made of ultradense materials and propel it towards the plasma cannon, annihilating the thing's right arm. I shift it to a sword so that it comes free and begin to repeat the process again and again, trying to keep within the abilities that Wade said Ronin had already demonstrated.

As the armour began to cave completely, he rockets for the sky and I let him, more concerned with surreptitiously placing Lotus rods throughout the infrastructure of the building to ensure it didn't collapse.

I exchange a few words with Jim and Tim, who look mostly like I remember them and then move towards Kim. She takes one look at me and collapses in my arms, crying insanely and beating on my chest. I get the feeling that I've just done something wrong. Then again, her thoughts sound kind of, whiney.

* * *

"If I keep getting treated like a super hero, I'm going to be tempted to buy a cape," I said to Wade as his holographic form sat down next to me on the couch in my parent's house. Still wearing the white suit, he's punching away on that gadget of his.

"I think that there's something weird going on. Shego is still unaccounted for and Drakken won't be free in this world for a long time. Where the hell did a mark III synthetic come from in a world where neither of them are free to invent them?"

"I'm just going to test something," I reply and begin to spread my mind again. I start clawing around for any source of power I can find. Luckily, there's a weather front moving in and I can draw on that. I begin to spread out, casting around for other power users. I begin to send out the customary mental handshakes to begin contact with the likes of Sensei or Monty.

Nothing.

Literally, nothing beyond a certain distance.

It's a bigger area than that when I was in college but not much. It ends between here and the district boundary for Upperton in the north and barely makes it to the outskirts of south metro Middleton in the south.

My eyes snap open and I catch a look at myself in the mirror over the fireplace. That would be my serious face.

"Something isn't Kosher here Wade, and I'm not talking about my dad's obsession with bacon. Why does this reality seem to end about eight miles from here. There's nothing beyond that and yet again, I can't make contact with Sensei."

"Maybe you're just tired. Sensing things takes a fair amount of energy," he suggests. This would be reasonable if the edges of my perception weren't so smooth.

"No, the edges are too smooth. If I were fatigued, the edges would fray where I had more energy to draw on. Here, the limits are solid, like a wall. There's no precedent for magic inhibitor fields on this world are there?"

"No, I've never even heard of the technology."

"Neither have I, but it seems inevitable. So what happens now?"

"Well, according to the time stream of this world, you'll go to confront Ray after having discovered that Kim is in fact a clone."

"Some kind of remote controlled simulacrum?" I ask, quietly.

"Yes, you make the leap based on what you saw this morning in the lab. There was what you and Wade assumed was a Kim clone. A scan reveals that the one upstairs is a remote controlled clone. How did you know?"

"Her mental activity seemed to have a sort of background noise to it. Off hand, I'd say it sounded rather like a fifty hertz hum. Now I'm just joining dots."

"Anyway, you go to Kim's lab, seal yourself in there and fight a shed-load of Deathray robots and clones, rescue Kim and then live happily ever after. Well, after fighting even more of them and instinctively doing the whole 'cloud of matter' Lotus blade trick."

"I'm due to develop some of my more impressive powers here, eh?"

"Well, officially, you won't be able to fly or astral project until the fourth century, but I'm guessing that you'll shift again before that happens."

"When is that due?"

"More than a year."

"Ah. Hope so."

"Anything else before I go?"

"Don't suppose you can send me to a world where I'm supposed to be in love with someone else next time? Bonnie would be nice for nostalgia and I've always wondered if Monique's any good in the sack."

"You need help, Ron."

"Says the guy who just told me that I'm stuck in a rerun of quantum leap."

* * *

Proving what I already knew was surprisingly easy. Pick up the Kimmunicator, point it at Kim and demand to know if she had a brain. The answer, predictably, was no. If this is a setup, then Wade is really throwing a spanner in the works. Now all I have to do is go and reclaim the woman of this other Ron's dreams and I can be done with this little game.

Kim's lab is a squat structure that, like most of the rest of the Middleton scientific district, looks like something made out of food packaging for an old sci-fi show. The sixties vaulted dome shape belies an age of just a handful of years since a size changing villain named Goliath Kilgore broke into the place, partially demolishing it.

"Right, now there's a security system that only Kim knows about. I can almost guarantee that Ray has no idea about Final Solution," Tim picked up from his brother. Before this point I had been staring at the trio of Deathray armours on the lawn but being Jewish, the words 'Final Solution' caught my attention.

"It's a sequence of heavy titanium alloy baffles that seal the whole thing preventing the escape of a supervillain. The damn things would take about a day to cut through. Now, what we're suggesting is that you sneak in there and seal those Deathrays out. Once you're in there, you'll be reasonably free to search for Kim once they're sealed out. We'll draw them away so that you can get in."

"Ok, how to I disengage the doors?"

"You don't. They're a permanent measure. Hide and wait for us to cut you out. That'll take about a day, as I said," replied Jim.

"Great," I said limply. In theory, I could get back out without too much difficulty, the joys of a limited ability to walk through walls, but there's no way that I could get Kim out like that. Hiding looks like it's the only option.

Eventually, we decide on a basic tactic of Jim and Tim distracting the clones in the armour and drawing them away while I make a rope deployment onto the roof, then in through the loading bay doors. Sounds easy enough, though in practical terms, I've defeated numerous Diablos before so this should be simple.

Despite the fact that this Ron is a ninja, I get a funny look from the twins and Wade when I ask for a blaster. Apparently it's out of character; he doesn't kill. Personally, I don't actually think that Clones and Synthetics count unless they're the last example of a person.

Eventually, I manage to get hold of a plasma rifle from part of the guard detail still hanging around outside what's left of the chapel. Right now I really wish I had access to one of Wade's magnetic catapult weapons, especially if I could get some polarised shard burst ammunition.

Descending on an abductor line from the Ninjet brings back memories of throwing myself out of jets, helicopters and basically anything else that flies over the years. I kind of miss that. When, if I get back, I'm going to have to make sure that Wade makes more of my insertions into aerial ones. I hit the roof and roll, taking a position where I'm invisible to the ground. The Deathray that was left guarding the loading bay doors is still there, despite the other two having gone to chase after the twins.

Off hand, I'd say that the thing had maybe a 19 TeraWatt power requirement in order to drive the musculature, weapons, shielding and flight systems. The generator is almost certainly located in the back of the crotch, but it's undoubtedly well armoured. The feed line for the weapons on the left arm, including the blaster cannon, is pretty fragile looking, however. That's my baby.

Normal people would be hurt by a twenty five foot drop but this hardly phases me. I land smoothly, absorbing most of the impact into my meridian chamber. That's something I'm going to have to burn quickly or I'll regret it. Regardless, I take a few steps back and put a plasma shot through the fuel and coolant lines of the weapon assembly, triggering the Final Solution as I flip back from the resultant explosion. I don't know, but I assume that the Deathray was toasted by the explosion.

Right now, I'm sealed into a small fortress, with a gigantic tunnel in the centre of the room, no noticeable heartbeats to zone in on and no real idea what I'm supposed to be doing. Great, a normal day at the office.

* * *

Author's Notes: Yet more mangling of G-go's Reunion. I love writing fanfiction of fanfiction. 


	36. Chapter 35

"Morning, Professor!" I declare cheerfully as I stroll into the older man's office, grinning like an idiot.

"Mister Stoppable, you're not due to be here for another hour. and where is Miss Possible?" asks the salt and pepper academic, taking of his glasses and locking me with a 'get out' look.

"I'll play that game when it's time, Hurlbetter, but I'm intrigued as to what you think about this; I may be completely insane, which is the vibe I get from you every time I come to see you, but many of the students here aren't human and when one of them discovered this, she went into shock. Another one went on a rampage attacking her philandering paraplegic boyfriend and beating him into a daze when she found out about his chocolate passion. I'd like to know what that indicates."

"Well, Mister Stoppable, I'd have to know the circumstances of the discoveries and the emotional states of both of these 'synthetics' as you call them before making a judgement," he replies, taking out that tape recorder of his once again.

Its at that moment that I realise what's bothering me about that tape recorder; what's been bothering me about it these last few days. The wheels don't turn when it's turned on.

I reach for the thing, picking it up. Hurlbetter looks somewhat put out by this behaviour.

"Mister Stoppable, what are you doing?"

"Well, Doc, here's the thing. You've been pulling this thing out and making sure its within easy reach each time I've come to see you. The trouble is, this isn't a tape recorder," I say as I grab onto the angled portion of the plastic moulding, pulling it down and out. The whole thing snaps open, forming the body of a heavy neural disruptor.

"Now, thinking about this, Doc, if you're a human, you'll be unconscious for a while and crap yourself. If you're a synthetic, you're about to explode across the room. Now, I want to know what's going on before I find out."

"No dice, young man." These are his last words. He detonates like an overstuffed water balloon as I fire the weapon at him.

No wonder Brockmeir's not been outed.

* * *

I wander out onto the campus, wondering what the legal status of a synthetic is in this world. If they're normal citizens, I've just committed murder. The thing here is that I'm sure that Hurlbetter knew what he was. It's easy to have sympathy for Monique; she didn't know. Brockmeir and Hurlbetter knew and spent time trying to convince me that I'm mad.

"Ron, where are you going?" asked Kim coming towards me, "we're due to see the Professor in a little while."

"Not unless you want me to commit a séance," I reply flatly. I hold up the tape recorder pistol for her to see, "Neural Disruptor."

"You murdered him?"

"I'd call it clone-slaughter at most. These weapons are non-lethal to humans. Synthetics explode violently for reasons we never really worked out," her face is a mask of horror, "not that these weapons even exist in this world according to your internet. Funny that."

"You shot him with that thing?"

"Yup, he exploded like a good little synthetic."

"How am I supposed to know that he wasn't human and that's just a normal gun?"

"Well, one, he was full of green stuff. Go look for yourself. If that isn't enough, I'll shoot myself in the head with it, but only in the comfort of our bathroom."

"Huh?"

"They cause you to soil yourself," I finish flatly.

She's nearly panicking so I show her up to the office and show her the mess that her teacher has become. I've destroyed enough synthetics over the years that the sight doesn't bother me any more but the spray of green slime and the shocked, shrivelled face of the older man is a shaking thing to see if you look upon it too hard. I try to be gentle, to do everything that my mother raised me to do and I'm trying to obey all the impulses that my body is giving me. Trying to reconcile two different sets of training that tell you two completely different things is never easy, especially when the one you know won't actually help you is the one that's deeper ingrained.

She tries to bury her head in my shoulder but keeps away because I've done something so horrible. We must be an odd sight to see, me with my shoulders slumped, her with her head down, facing me but not looking at me and Hurlbetter slumped in his chair, evacuated backwards with his materials spread over the surrounding area.

"He was a syntho-clone?" she asks eventually.

"We usually call them Synthetics. He was a basic copy with no internal skeleton. I'm not sure if there ever was a real Hurlbetter; he seems like a fairly generic entity."

"You mean that there probably never was a Professor Hurlbetter?"

"Off hand, I'd say that this was a reproduction of a real human with a modified personality. It's likely there was a real," I pause, looking at the desk, "Rodney Hurlbetter but you've likely never met him," I said placidly.

"And Monique's not real?"

"No, Monique just isn't original. Her personality is still as real as yours or mine and she's the one that you made friends with, not the human she's a copy of. Right now, she needs your friendship, your love. I just hope you're willing to be strong enough to put your fear aside for her sake."

"You're the one who condemned her for being a synthetic!"

"Actually, I condemned Belinda for knowing that she was and pretending. Monique simply didn't know. She needs you now. Go to her. She's in Felix's hospital room. I know that you can put aside the feeling of betrayal because you were both betrayed by the same thing and she really needs you right now."

* * *

I let her go, watching her back as she retreats across the quad. I'm not entirely sure why I feel sorry for the synthetics here but some of them are so innocent, Monique especially. Her disgust when she found out that she was not human was one of the hardest things I've ever had to watch and that's saying something.

I contemplate my next move for a few moments, then sense movement behind me. I half turn as the first bullet passes through my arm. Collapsing slightly, I sag to my knee as I keep twisting to see my attacker. Thousands of hours of training is screaming for me to react but somehow I feel like I deserve this. A tall brunette's dark eyes flare with each additional muzzle flash from the small pistol in her hand. I feel more of the nine millimetre projectiles cutting into my flesh.

She's a synthetic, so why is she missing? She's managed to find a whole collection of muscle and one organ that isn't really essential. I should have a collapsed lung and probably a perforated spleen. I'm bleeding internally but I'm not dying and she's running out of bullets.

"You've ruined my life, Stoppable!" she cries through incoherent tears.

"Make me one promise, Belinda…make sure that no-one notices when you swap me back to whatever Kim actually knows and loves…I don't want her knowing that I'm dead."

"Selflessness now?!" she screams, "Where was that selflessness when I needed it? You knew that he was cheating on me but you didn't say anything because I didn't matter! I'm just a synthetic!"

"You were lying to me and to Kim. You were watching us."

"How do you know that?"

"I listened! Same way I knew that Monique and Felix were together. You were furtive the whole time you were with us," I grit my teeth, each breath painful.

She steadies the pistol, sagging into a movie standard unsure female gunman pose, her shoulders pulled in and her elbows at her side. The Beretta starts to shake in her hands.

"You didn't know why you were doing it did you?" I say at last through the blur of pain.

"No!" she shakes violently with sobs, "why am I doing things like this? Why am I so angry?"

"You're false personality is conflicting with your core programming. You're going to suffer a collapse in a few moments. I'm sorry."

"What?"

A final hollow crack shakes through the air and a final bullet passes through my chest. This one clipped the edge of my right ventricle and collapsed my lung. As the world goes white, I feel a tiny tear of pity cut down the sweat of my face and watch her collapse into a pile by my feet.

Awareness is a strange thing. You'd expect death to sound like silence or like the sound of heaven, whatever that is. As it stands, it sounds like white noise.

Dying sounds like white noise.

Noise.

Silence.

* * *

Author's Notes: I honestly can't remember a passage that I enjoyed writing as much as this last section. Don't know if you guys agree but I think it's a hell of a moment. 


	37. Chapter 36

Prophet and I huddle down behind a patch of what looks like sage. It smells good but I instinctively feel that it's toxic; which sucks because it smells like it would have fried up fairly well.

The night is tight and would have that sort of hazy background noise that crickets and an almost infinite number of other insects make in the humid air of the Cambodian jungle. It would have if it wasn't filled with cracking reports from small arms and the occasional lazy buzz of heavier projectiles. In a surreal way, battles at night are beautiful in their own way with the maddened dance of tracer fireflies stitching the air.

Being trained by the Paragons has its downside. Being of comparable combat capabilities to all of the self-cultivated members of the group, I occasionally get called upon to assist them in their own brand of crap. The deal on Senior's island seems to have solidified Immortal's opinion that I should be helping them deal with their problems. Not sure why I'm obliged but he seems fairly sure about it.

That said, Monty understands the whole occult bit a lot better than I do and if he thinks this is worth helping them interfere with, then that's good enough for me.

Monty's going to make a pass with Immortal and Arahat in a few minutes, hopefully going to draw a few of the flight capable minions into the open so that Prophet and Pagan can blast them. I'm tasked with keeping them and Saint alive through the battle. Shaman can take care of himself.

For the first time in a few years I'm wearing that strange custom combat armour that Immortal had made for me, shotgun and all. Today, my primary weapon is a ten gauge shotgun with buckshot, each pellet formed of a talisman wafer wrapped in sanctified silver from the Vatican. I have no idea why materials relevant to different religions would function together but they're deadly to both our quarry here and those that summoned them. I have a whole book worth of talismans on my belt, each inscribed with the necessary incantations to cast a single ward. The air is so heavy with malevolent magic that static electricity is dancing over the etched wards on the surface of my armour. Tonight is going to be a special kind of fight.

* * *

A huge number of bat-like twisted beings, formed from the possessed and ruined forms of children snatched from the nearest city take to the air on their foul, leathery wings to pursue the Montys and Immortals that swooped through moments before, smashing and cutting dozens of the insane cultists that manned the outer defences.

The freak monsters are too slow to catch them as they rocket skyward. The little wretches try to pursue but are met by sweeping waves of ball lightning and choking clouds of flies and biting insects. Showers of scorched and stripped bones begin to tumble through the canopy onto us. Saint cringes under the rain but she seems to be coping well. I can't imagine someone who knows that God himself has her back would be particularly jumpy but then again, she's inherited a whole legacy of dying young from the line of saints. Not on my watch. I'm going to bring her home safe and sample some of that sweet gratitude of hers.

There's a man sneaking up through the bushes a little to Prophet's left. He's good, I'll give him that. Most of the crazy big game hunter style villains that Kim and I faced over the years make more noise than this fellow. I'll have to keep my eye on this one.

The main defences are ahead in the form of a set of trenches surrounding the cluster of buildings that form the compound. This would be easy if it weren't for the fact that the defenders seem to have more ammunition than they can manage to keep in storage and a large number of unskilled but enthusiastic men acting as troopers.

It's hard to believe that something as innocent as a Wicca message board could breed into something as extreme as this. One innocuous little message that one of Arahat's agents noticed a little while ago exploded into a tightly knit web of chat-rooms full of people exchanging notes on how they had summoned demonites and even minor demons. Someone along the way thought to suggest that they delve into the more impressive summoning rituals of the more commonly available magic books. Before you know it there's a small group buying this property in the middle of the Cambodian jungle so that they can do little experiments and turn their techniques towards whatever goal the big thinker in the middle of the web has in mind.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was one of the whole crop of new 'freedom fighters', villains by another name who wish to rest control of the earth from Drakken so that they can rule it themselves. The only reason that Dementor isn't part of that crop is because he's currently happy with the scientific leaps and bounds that he's achieved since that little partnership with Wade worked out and Senior's funding began to seep in. He's pretty much running the Southern Europe branch of the rebellion these days.

I shock back into the real world as I hear the sniper in the rough begin to squeeze the trigger on his rifle.

* * *

I look down on him, twitching slightly as I shift my weight from one branch to another. The combat knife makes a slight ping noise as it leaves the holster and I pull it up to beside my face in a guard position with the blade protruding from the back of my fist.

The gunman is almost directly beneath me, his rifle aimed at Prophet. Janice is a nice girl, despite her mother and I'm not about to allow the only piece of ass I've met in five years that my mother would approve of to catch bullets with her face. Who knows, maybe I'll be able to get a little gratitude for this. My game face goes out of the window at the thought of maybe even tapping both her and Saint at once. Maybe have a whole gangbang with just them and a lot of me.

Knowing that that won't happen if I don't intervene, I execute a perfect drop, slamming a foot into the but of his rifle and soaking the impact into my thigh muscles. He barely gets the chance to gasp as his bullet sails off into the sky and I plunge the knife into the meat of his back. It's a shallow wound but it'll be debilitating. Instantly, another of me is beside me, grabbing him by the mouth and flipping him over.

We exchange a slight glance as we both realise that it's a woman. I begin to smile harder but he has to be a spoil sport and not let me have any fun. He grips her neck with his free hand and carries her off, undoubtedly to take her to Dreamer and the rest behind the lines.

I never get to have any fun.

* * *

Even after all this time, I still hate that part of me. Not because he's there, but because he thinks how I wish I didn't. Just going near him as he looked at that sniper lying on the ground made me feel dirty. His thoughts sit heavy in the front of my mind, like soil stuck to my boot. When I'm close to him, I feel his desires scratching at the edges of my own and I feel somehow stained by it.

I carry her away from him as he slips invisibly back into the night to go take his frustrations out on some other poor bastard. I still don't trust him ever since I took it upon myself to lead a mission in the mid-states and stood most of the watch shifts by splitting myself. I was roused from my slumber because of extreme pressure in my jeans. I couldn't fathom it, until I took a moment to take stock of my emotions.

Jocelyn still hasn't forgiven me for pulling him off her. She was living out all of her dirtiest fantasies about me with a version of me that was more than willing to play that game. I can still taste the sweetness of her lips, hear her little gasps of pleasure, see the joy in her eyes when I let myself sift through those memories. One day, I may try to reconcile with her, but I'm honestly not sure if I would want to return to being her friend or to have what he did. She reminds me so much of Kim that it tends to rake open wounds when I see her angry at me.

Head in the game, Stoppable. Another of me takes up my place next to Rufus and Prophet, though I hope he won't be needed. The little mole-rat is theoretically capable of looking after himself, having most of the original Rufus's abilities and brains, though he lacks the original's mystical abilities. In all honesty, if the original hadn't died of accidental arsenic poisoning in Israel, I'm sure he could have attained longevity through training similar to my own. As it is, the clones are competent enough helpers but can't really be relied upon in a pinch.

Monty comes in for another pass, turning a selection of small rocks into a deadly shower of exploding projectiles. I feel the shallow gasps of dozens of unlucky cultists as they're cut to ribbons by the razor-edged flint shards. I rally a fistful of Immortal's porcelain warriors and charge down the hill.

* * *

The one thing that I never thought about when I began this was that there may be things other than humans in these trenches. A hulking, clawed shadow with a bulky, distended skull and paper thin white skin leers back me. Not a demonite but a real live demon, with actual anatomy. Fascinating, though summoning is a cornucopia of disturbing concepts.

I rack the slider and fire a blast from my shotgun, cutting through the air where it had stood, obliterating a demonite behind it that looked like the bastard offspring of a dog and a really ugly chick. It collapses to the ground as a sizzling pile of whatever filthy mix of sand, flesh and excrement that they used to bind the damn thing. I twist, knowing what the cracking sound behind me is going to be.

Three of the terracotta soldiers have been smashed to powder in the time that it takes me to blink. Further up the trench, a trio of me's are blasting away at an approaching mixture of demonites and human soldiers sporting local made parangs, glowing with unhealthy looking shades of light. The big, shining black eyes of the creature regard me with a mild dispassion before it lashes its serpentine tail and lunges towards me, moving like lightning.

I watch as if the world was shrouded in a grim strobe light as it moves towards me in jerks, slightly out o phase with normal time. It's a cheap trick but hugely effective. I watch as my shotgun barks again, the tiny pellets spewing forth and the monster dancing between them with a faint hint of humour on its lipless skull. Wishing it wasn't going to come to this, I drag the totally non-magical but warding etched katana from my back and bring it to bear in one smooth, if desperate move. Outsized talons batter it aside as though it were little more than a stick, though both wards and flesh glow slightly as they clash, smoke rising slightly from the edges of the marks.

I leap backward and raise my guard, trying desperately to think of a tactic that will allow me to slay it or at least open it up from an assault from elsewhere.

Fortunately, I don't have to wait long. With a classic disregard for safety or wisdom, Rufus comes sailing through the air and hammers into the side of the beast's head. Whether it was momentarily distracted by the pain of the wards or simply didn't realise what was happening because Rufus is a clone, I don't know. Based on its reaction, I'd say it was the latter.

It reels violently as Rufus clings on for dear life, his sharp little claws digging into the side of its head, between the loose folds of the beast's skull.

"Rhakchath, meere-gul, rhakchath asolom!" it screams in terror. Unfortunately, I know exactly what the abyssal tongue means due to Saint's little gift. I heard something more akin to, "_horror, beast what is this, horror being_?"

For a moment I stand phased until the answer presents itself. Rufus has identical form to another entity but lacks the essences that the original had. Therefore, he's an incomplete being, lacking much of the spiritual component. To a spiritual being like a demon, that's like having a black hole stuffed in your ear. Hmmm…Black Hole Deep.

I take the opportunity to lunge at it with a strong overhand strike. It parries but is forced onto the back foot. I drive it back with a further combination of _the phoenix rises_ and _the bull lowes_, forcing it to drop into what looks to be an unbalanced stance. It lashes out with its tail, though I catch that strike with an open palmed strike, a chi flare emerging from the core of my being. It screams slightly as it tries to bring its talons to bear on me. Instead of parrying the second blow, I slide backwards and sever its wrist. Boiling black ichor spills onto the clammy ground as it screams a howl that could have melted the flesh of an unshielded mind.

As it reels, I thrust the blade of the weapon through the base of that ugly distended skull. It passes clean out through the top of what I assume is its brainpan, black blood spraying up and down the blade and cascading onto my hands.

Dragging the weapon free, the blade flicks and swings in a neat arc, smoking all the while. It stares at me in disbelief for a moment.

"_How?"_ it gasps with a hollow whine before it collapses, forcing me to avoid its deadweight. I scoop Rufus into my hand, realising a little of what the thing found so unpleasant about him. There's no way that he could have jumped like he did to get to the side of the thing. Both he and I look back to where he flew from.

Squatting at the edge of the trench is a duplicate of me. Same one. He's grinning like a whole bottle of sinner and his eyes are sparkling.

"Forgive me?" he laughs.

Rufus and I both chorus the word "No" at the same time, before I look at the little dude on my palm and declare "Jinx, you own me a soda!" at which he sulks a little.

* * *

I retrieve both the sword and my shotgun from the muck, carefully checking both to ensure they're undamaged and clean enough to function. The sword looks like its seen better days but the lotus isn't much good for dealing with stuff like demonites. Nothing to stab.

Several of me and one of the Montys have successfully broken through one of the secondary defences, clearing the way to the central bunker. Pushing through heavy fire, I shift myself into a less consistent form, allowing some of the shower of semi-demonic bullets to pass cleanly through me. These kids seem to be trying to enchant everything that they can to make life as hard as physically possible for us. That or they're trying to make up for the shortcomings of their defences. Leaping over a small barricade, I dispatch a couple of the defenders with sword and shot. The one on the left falls back, smoking and burning as the pellets break into her body.

Vampires.

I hate vampires.

Another shot, clean and precise to the heart causes her to collapse into dust. This just got a whole lot more dangerous.

Vicious running battles occur throughout the corridors of the building and the rooms adjoining them. The passion me is causing numerous casualties and bringing down numerous others. I know that he's merrily killing most of the men and disarming and binding the women, taunting them with their powerlessness before moving on.

It worries me that the most powerful part of me is not the trained disciplined core of me but the insane, unfettered passions that burn within me. Even with twenty five bodies running around the place he isn't all that dilute. He's easily as powerful as my core personality and sometimes disobeys me when there are only two of us. Ever since the Joss thing, I've never had fewer than a half dozen bodies if I have more than one.

* * *

Eventually, side by side with the passion me, I break through into the inner sanctum of the complex. There must be more than a thousand demonites guarding this place and they keep spawning from the filth that scattered through the halls of the buildings. There are traps that make the Indiana Jones movies seem sedate and at one point, I was forced to cancel the bindings on some of my bodies after they were crushed under a huge boulder. A huge flaming boulder with eyes.

As we survey the scene, wondering where the next demonite or vampire attack will come from, I measure a small flash of movement at the back of the room. A hooded figure slits the throat of a young local girl with fear in her eyes and as the blood cascades off the athame onto the floor, the air behind the figure ripples and it steps back through the wall. I assume that it's some form of gate spell that was prepared in advance. I don't really have time to consider this, however.

In the centre of the room, in the middle of I complex pattern of lines and circles stands a gigantic, almost ridiculously stereotyped demon of massive size. He must stand around fourteen feet if he's a day, with horns pointed forward and a smile on his bullish face that could sour milk.

"I've been waiting for you Stoppable," he announces slowly, looking straight at me, not the copy. My blood runs cold.

I have enough time to tip my head in confusion as a torrent of fire rushes over both of me. We split, going in different directions. As the fire settles, I begin to hear whispers in the centre of my being. More cheap tricks but unfortunately, I think these ones were better chosen for the opponent.

I hear promises of a lifetime of luxury with Kim by my side, ever loving ever attentive. Saint, Prophet, Bonnie, Joss, Monique, Yori and Anne are offered to me in turn, in every possible combination. I feel a horrible feeling running down my spine as a massive sword that looks like it's made of twisted bones and shoulder blades whistles through my position a moment before. The blood must have broken some of the circles.

The demon is the least of my concerns at the moment. The whispering has intensified slightly, coming from two directions at once. I look over at Passion Me, knowing what's going on. The seduction in these suggestions is affecting him more because duty weighs lightly on him. He's grinning at me with pure joy cutting sickly through the edges of my trademark smile.

Knowing that I'm going to start turning against myself and the others, I cut the enchantments holding his form together. The sad fact is that I don't need this demon to have what I want. I just need to forgive myself and get on with it.

Another blow hammers down on me. This time I can't dodge it and the blade shatters clean through my katana. Not that it was anything more than corroded junk by this point.

"I'm surprised that the simulacrum caved in so easily. You have a powerful mind, just as my contractor warned me."

"Passions are easily turned but they're also some of the most powerful allies."

"Your wisdom exceeds your years, whelp."

"Who is your contractor?" I demand finally, stilling my dodging and dancing long enough to allow the lotus to coalesce from the smoky, bloodcoated particles ripping free from my skin, rather than flowing out of the puckered valves of scar tissue that have formed at the edges of the tattoo.

He begins to swell up to the size of a small building, filling the big chamber clear up to the roof. Cheap tricks but avoiding blows from a sword that's now the size of a bus is tremendously difficult.

"I take it that this mysterious contractor told you about my powers then," I state, knowing that it was unlikely. He grins and brings the sword down on me again, as if it will make the slightest bit of difference. I can feel hair growing from the flanks of my face, a hardening in my brow and a twisting in my feet. I've reached right into the centre of the monkey power and I'm joining with Sun Wukong to wield it fully.

Raising one hand in a seemingly hollow gesture, I don't even bother bracing myself. I've defeated every kind of demon imaginable through force of arms or trickery. I have favours I can call in from all the corners of heaven to have him removed. I have friends who could summon the wrath of God himself, the hosts of heaven or legions of the greatest heroes from a thousand societies. He doesn't stand a fucking chance.

The blade hits my palm as if it were being gently passed to me, though it could have razed a city block with its gentleness. We stand there, frozen in the moment. I could live in that moment. I have such faith in myself and right now, I know what it is to not only believe that I can do anything but to know it. The demon looks past the blade in confusion, as if he caught his coat pocket on a door handle.

"Growing to giant size is a parlour trick," thunders a voice a thousand octaves below my normal goofy tones, rattling my own ribs. "Let me show you how it's done, grass hopper!"

Without word, gesture or thought, I begin to expand. As his sword is pushed towards the ceiling, he steps back in surprise as I reach his eye line. We exchange glances that speak whole volumes as to out understanding of the situation. Letting go of the blade, I point my hand, open palmed at the gigantic unholy bastard.

My head pushes against the ceiling, pushing though it like it was damp paper. There's little resistance and the whole thing falls away. As I reach double his size, I reach down and pick him up one handed.

I stare at the horned red doll in the centre of my fist, feeling contempt that seems out of place. I've trained for years to respect the abilities of my foes but right now, I'm so far out of this little bound bitch's league that it really isn't funny.

"I suggest you start talking about your contractor because you've already breached that contract. You ain't going to win this."

"I really don't think so, Human," he smiles as his mouth distends like a cartoon character's and bites solidly into my finger.

I feel little pain from this but something in me snaps back into a shape that it's never been in before. A snap of my wrist hammers him down into the ground. A hundred million metric tonnes of astral iron comes hammering down onto his head as he tries to grow up to be my size, the star metal wishing staff in the form of legend right now.

"Feel old Monkey's cudgel!" I breath gently as he explodes in hellish fire, setting swathes of the damp foliage alight in a horrible grey flame. I feel Immortal buzzing around my head. Rufus is still clinging to me desperately, panicking. I know that he has no idea how I did any of this and I think the change of appearance shook him slightly.

"You tapped into the hsien essence in the middle of the power?" asks Immortal, coming to rest standing on the air in front of my chest.

"Seems that way," I reply, genuinely confused, "it doesn't feel like it did when Arahat taught me to do it thought. I feel, I don't know, whole."

"I think you've learned a lesson that only you could have taught yourself, Ron. It seems that soon, the student will truly have exceeded the masters."

"You know, I think I may well have, Hsien," I reply without any hubris whatsoever. He smiles at me as I begin to let the truth of my situation shine through into the core of my being. All of the magics I have woven during the battle begin to unravel, the lotus sinks back into my skin and Rufus scurries to the safety of my belt pouch. I know what I have to do and as I approach my original size, I make a decision.

"That's the first time you've ever referred to me by my real honorific," said Immortal quietly, "but that isn't enough for me. My name is Gary and Arahat is called Ross. We want you to know that."

"In a few years, I'll contact you, Gary. At that point, we'll reclaim your wife and children. Until then, I have a woman who needs to know how much I love her."

I smile faintly, an expression mimicked by Immortal, Gary apparently, and by the shard of Sun Wukong sat in the centre of my soul. Moments later, I'm gathering the cloud trapeze beneath me and before you know it I'm in Middleton.

* * *

I set myself down in well kept fields of the Highfields cemetery. It's the middle of second watch and if I stay here fore a few moments, Diablos will be bearing down on me. I honestly don't care.

I sweep the stones from Kim's grave, knowing for the moment that her death should be a source of joy. Hell, I could visit her in heaven if I wanted, one day I may do so.

"I love you Kim, but today, I need to love the living."

I sail into the air and pass cleanly through the ground into the sewers. Still flying, I hammer along sewers, maintenance ducts and steam tubes of the city.

I burst through twelve layers of security like they're made of paper. I barrel through the base, searching for someone specific. I find her in the mess hall. Landing, gusts of wind hammering out as physics catch up with me, I put my hands on her shoulders and lean in as she talks to Wade.

"I'm sorry, Wade, but I need to talk to this vision for a moment."

"Ron…?" she begins as she turns her head to look at me through the corner of her eyes. My lips meet hers, cutting off the rest of whatever she may have been about to say. A thousand hours of restraint melt and I kiss her like she truly deserves; gently and yet with such force that I can feel her hair stand on end and hear the crinkling as she grips the fabric of her pants. As I pull back, she sits there, a look of utter peace and happiness on her face, eyes closed and the faintest smile you ever did see on those beautiful lips.

A hand appears under her shoulder and I have her stand before I realise what I'm doing. Catching myself, I sweep her off her feet and carry her carefully to the door which a pair of my fellow rebels hold open for me. I turn briefly back to the room, as her head buries itself into the crook of my neck.

"Gentlemen, you can have the lovely Miss Rockwaller back when I've made it absolutely clear how much she means to me. At least twice," I declare before leaving the room to thunderous applause.

* * *

Author's Note: Before you wonder, yes, this is my favourite chapter I've written so far, though the next one, which you'll have to wait until at least tomorrow for is also awesome. Perverse as it is, I enjoyed the process of proof reading this more than the current chapter of Dune that i'm reading.

Anyway, this is part of a complex subplot that should probably have been partitioned off into another story like the time-travel bit, but it's here instead, making life more complicated for you poor dears, struggling with my non-linear madness!

Health and sanity where it's due, Thom.


	38. Chapter 37

Gently, with a surgeon's skill, my skin is slowly peeled off of my thigh and pinned back onto my knee. It would be a beautiful piece of craftsmanship if I wasn't being forced to endure it without anaesthesia. The surgeon performing the operation is a swarthy fellow wearing what looks like a PVC gimp mask, probably to hide his identity from me more than anything else.

This particular piece of East German fetish artist is not my primary concern, however. Stood to the left of the slab that I'm nailed to is my captor. She's good, I can tell you that much. Living through the pain is difficult but I've kept my mind open and in the moment. She's definitely a woman. I can tell because her scent changed when she began getting turned on by my suffering.

I'm guessing that she's been fantasizing about this moment for a long time. Then again, I could have told that by the elaborate measures that have been employed in my downfall. I'm literally nailed to an inverted cross with my head pointing west and downward slightly. The gimp-surgeon and his machines are surrounded by almost a dozen layers of warding circles and bindings, including at least three separate occult systems' worth of symbols. I've been bound here with classic Satanic, highly classical Catholic and some form of crypto-Daoist techniques, though right now I'm just guessing. Some of the characters look like Hebrew twisted into horrible shapes and other scripts look like Arabic or Assyrian; like I said, a lot of preparation work.

Off to my right, opposite the cabalist lady, is a small Yoda-like figure, probably a half demon or an Illuminati of power. It's constantly muttering something that I suspect has a lot to do with the fact that my wounds keep closing up. I doubt that it's a healing spell, however, because beyond the limits of my bindings are a dozen more binding circles with other crosses in them. To each one is bound a human being. Some I know, some I don't. Each time one of my wounds closes a centimetre, one of them is cut an inch. The cacophony of screams is sickening to the extreme.

The Gimp begins to cut into the muscles of my thigh, apparently looking for the central nerve bundle. He's going to strip it. That's going to be painful and horribly debilitating to a random one of the poor souls bound to the crosses. After a few minutes, he begins to tease it free of the surrounding tissue so that he can hold it clear of it. The cabalist steps forward.

"So, Ronald, how do you like my hospitality so far?" she purrs gently, her voice sounding strangely like Kim's though I can't tell if it's an illusion or not with all the magic and blood in the air. She strokes a finger down the side of my face, encased in one of those strange talon-ring things that Goths sometimes wore back in the old days.

"It's not so bad, but you should have words with the Chef. The Kosher option was distinctly under-parr."

"I like that you're maintaining your sense of humour, Ronald," why must she call me that? "but I'm surprised that you're not using your powers to heal yourself."

"You assume that I can?" she knows too much about me to make such a stupid misjudgement of my abilities. I may be able to open my belly and wash my guts in boiling oil but I can't heal per se. Not damage that other people inflict on me anyway. Well, there is kind of a way that I can, but that isn't really an option right now.

"My research indicates that you have the powers of most of the Paragons, so it seems logical that like that little slut Saint, you should be able to use healing magic."

"Hate to break it to you, Lady," I reply as the gimp begins to carefully peel the casing off my nerve, to the screams of a young Hispanic girl I have a horrible feeling may be Zita, "but Saint can't heal herself, only others. And I don't have her powers, only those of them that were able to actually teach me."

The screaming stops as gimp looks to his mistress for instructions. She eventually nods and the screams begin anew, this time from a blond man in his thirties.

"You know why you're here?" she asks at last, seemingly sure that I'll have an answer. I do, but it's a smartass one.

"Because you're sick of watching what little snuff you managed to download before porn vanished from the internet?" I told you it was glib.

"Not quite. Cast your mind back to a time about three years ago, on a small island…"

Oh, crap. That's going to come back to bite me? Why now? That said, a few months ago, I was part of the team that destroyed what I assume was her last attempt at gaining ultimate power.

"Let me guess, this is an elaborate revenge for the death of that bitch," I state in a nice flat tone specifically designed to get her angry.

* * *

It takes the best part of three hours for the screaming to die down. I'm healing up nicely, though this is as much to do with the little creepy dude as it is to do with my own abilities. I'm using as much Li as I can to try and heal myself past whole in the vague hope that it may have some benefit to those who suffered my wounds.

I have to say, though I still don't know who this woman is, she's a fairly bright spark for a classical villain. Her first course of action, before waking me, was to have the lotus dug out from my flesh and placed in a warding of its own. I can feel the thing trying to get out, as if it's alive and resenting capture. There are acupuncture needles in each of my tantiens with paper wards stuck on them to keep me from outwardly manifesting chi. I've been painted with every kind of inhibitor spell I can think of and if I tried to tap the Monkey Power, that energy would be sent every which way but Tuesday.

Working from base principals, I know that this is to do with the woman I killed on Senior's island. Her name was Olivia Vasselheim-Kult, though she went by the name Kult after her Father's death. Apparently, I found this out from Senior after the fact.

This woman was either closely related to or in love with, this Olivia. Based on the way that she's gotten all hot under the collar watching me being tortured, I'm going to swing for relation. Cousin isn't usually enough for this sort of ludicrously elaborate revenge so I'm going to say sister.

I'm being held here and my powers are being contained but no attempt has yet been made to take them from me. I'm a walking battery of Chi and I have access to Sun Wukong's powers so most villains would look at me as a really big outlet socket.

Not so here. All that's happened is that I've been tortured then forced to watch as the wounds are transferred to these poor souls around me. Amongst them are my childhood sweetheart Zita Flores, the lovely Bonnie, one of the martial artists I trained with and a guy who's probably related to the Possible clan in some way. I have no idea why they're being put through this, but I know that I'm going to have to ask for Saint's help after this is resolved. Bonnie has a lot of tissue damage on the surface of her chest and one of her nipples is missing, based on what was done to me and Zita and some random guy are both going to be in wheelchairs from now on.

So, this seems to be totally a revenge plot without some other agenda. The trouble is, once you get to the point of thinking that taking over the world would be the right thing to do, you start to get into a mindset where everything leads into the next stage of some gratuitous plot.

* * *

I'm starting to wonder if the little dude is even conscious of what's around him by the time that the bitch and her gimp return. I've been trying to engage him in conversation for some time, in the vague hope that I can distract him for long enough to assess what's been done to whom. I'd hate to have to leave anyone behind but it too few of them can actually walk and I can't duplicate, that may be the case.

"He won't answer you, Stoppable. You don't even exist for him. Only I do," she fills in as she returns. To prove a point, she gently strokes the side of his head and he stops chanting for long enough to whimper in pleasure and then resumes muttering.

"What did you do to him?"

"Me? Nothing at all. I rescued him you see," she coos as the little beast, who obviously likes the attention.

"He's an Illuminati then? I might have guessed."

"Not quite. His was not a voluntary possession and he didn't gain anything from it, save for a natural talent for speaking the magic tongues. He was one of my sister's greater successes, though my achievements have been somewhat more than hers since. She never did know how to delegate to the stupid."

"I thought you'd turn out to be Olivia's sister," I chuckle, despite myself, "so, what are you? Younger sister, older sister or a really gay little brother?"

It seems she really didn't like that. She waves the gimp forward. He's carrying something that looks like a hand blender with some serious add-ons. If you've never felt your thigh muscles being gathered up like cheap spaghetti, then I envy you. More to the point, you didn't have to listen to the screams of a banker from New York as the same thing happens to him in slow motion. Now that was torture.

"So, little brother, what's the plan here? You haven't asked me a single question so far and it's obvious that you don't have any particular plan set up in the background because you're not gloating like a good little megalomaniac."

"Megalomaniac? Hahahahahahaha!" she lets rip with a traditional supervillain laugh that makes me think of my time as Zorpox, "you think that I'm going to behave like those idiots and tell you my plan while you're strapped to a table? you really are stupid, Stoppable. You're too stupid to figure out what connects all of these people to you and you're too stupid to see what I really want from you."

Now I've got her going, all I have to do is get her to keep going.

"There is no link here, you stupid bitch! Bonnie and the martial artist over there are the only ones that I've spoken to in the last six years!"

"Oh, you don't get the links? These are all members of the resistance. Mostly high ranking members at that. To make this even more interesting, they're all members of the resistance who know about your children."

Children? What's she talking about? I don't have any kids.

"I don't have any children."

"Are you expecting me to believe that I have children that I don't even know about? You're off your nut, lady!"

"Oh really? Bonnie, honey, why don't you tell Ronnie here about little Lynn Possible?"

"Bonnie?" I gasp, fear suddenly griping me. Kim's dead and I never touched her so that only leaves two possibilities…

"I'm sorry, Ronnie, she forbade me from telling you. She thought you'd make her get rid of it," she's crying, though I can feel a wave of relief washing out from her. It's like she's been tortured holding it in.

"Who, Bonnie? Was it Joss or Anne?"

"Anne. Wait? You slept with Joss? You never told me about this," anger bubbles in her voice.

"It was the passion duplicate, though I don't think she was complaining," pause, "Anne? How did she hide that from me? She looked like the side of a house when she was laden with Jim and Tim."

"Why do you think she spent so much time helping out in New York while you were away?"

"You're saying that she had her while I was held captive by Shego?"

"I'm sorry, Ronnie. You have no idea how much it hurt keeping this from you. You'd love her. She has eyes like Kim and your hair…"

"How horribly touching, isn't it Ronald?" cuts in the bitch, "and now you know where the late Mr New Yorker over there and Master Seth Possible fit into this. So who's next?" she turns and looks at Zita.

"Well, at least I know that I don't have a child by Zita. I never even kissed her."

"No, but she does know one of your other children. Isn't that right, Zui Fei?"

"Master, I am sorry for my weakness," gasps the martial artist. Suddenly, I recognise most of the remaining faces here as members of the Asian and Western America sections of the resistance. I've met all of them at least once.

"Who?" I demand, sifting through all of those I've ever shared my flesh with over the years. Discrediting cloning, there's a Kim clone, Joss, Bonnie, Monique, Saint and Yori…oh God, Yori!

Before the poor man can answer, I bolt slightly, almost pulling myself into a sitting position, the tearing in my wrists being displaced to one of Joss's old sweethearts.

"Yori? I have a child by Yori?" I demand, almost in panic. It must obviously be mine if they discredit the possibility it may be Fukoshima's.

"I am sorry, Master. I was sworn not to tell you. We've been hiding Mistress Yori within our chapters for some time. He's a beautiful and talented boy. She named him Ryu-chan, after your time together."

"Isn't that sweet, Ronnie?" asks the bitch in the centre of the room. I have two children and there are still two members of our little share circle left.

"So which one of Kim, Joss, Saint, Bonnie, Monique or Saint do you two represent?" I ask to the last couple of the circle, having a horrible feeling that it's going to be Kim.

"None of those women, Stoppable," comes my reply, finally. I sit in confusion for a few moments, trying to think where I know these people from.

"You really can't work it out, can you Stoppable?" she cackles in the middle of the triangle that we form.

I cast around in my mind desperately trying to think of where I know them from or for any other female that I may have slept with. Wait. There was one. Oh no. It can't be!

"Shego?!!" I blurt out, terrified for a moment. I never admitted what happened there to anyone.

"Now you're getting it," the bitch laughs, "I'm sure that little Jade Godfrey will forgive you the couple of missed birthdays."

I hang my head in defeat as the gimp begins cutting again. I hear screams from all throughout the room but they can't drown out the tears of betrayal that Bonnie has echoing through my mind.

* * *

Author's Notes: OMG, Ron has kids? Can this get any weirder? Oh hell yes. On the down side, I work 5 chapters ahead and I'm struggling with chapter 44 so there's going to be a curve to my updates for the time being. 


	39. Chapter 38

I settle down next to Damien and go through the basics of opening myself up. It's been somewhat harder in the last couple of years than I would hope. For a time it felt like I was suffering one betrayal after another and after that, it began to feel like I was bringing it upon myself with my love and trust. Such a thought is a hollow and false one but it gnaws at the mind like a cancer, undermining your very foundations. This is the reason that the Buddha himself had renouncers seclude themselves in monasteries so that the pettiness of men could not wound their spirits.

I focus on the one love that I have that no matter what has been done to it has remained pure in my mind. The reason for this is because it's an unrequited, quiet love. It's been attacked, abused, twisted and distorted. It's run through my veins like poison at times but I've been able to hold onto my perspective about it.

Simply put, I try opening my heart to the love I have for Kim. Not the clones, not the fantasies, not Shego's mad scenarios but the real one, the one who's last breath escaped her as I shoved my way through the crowds of Tokyo. No wonder I can't be bothered giving that city the benefit of the doubt.

Breath, feel, allow the lotus to bloom.

Breath, feel, allow the lotus to bloom.

Why is this so damn hard?

I hear him stir next to me, the sounds of fabric moving, the smell of fear. I haven't actually smelt that in a long time. I guess I'm opening up a little. I follow the line down, tasting the grief of betrayal, imagined and real. I guess that it's all imagined when you get down to it.

He's struggling, against himself and against the cacophony of thoughts that a young mind must struggle against to attain peace. I reach out and place my hand on his, feeling him relax a little under the reassurance of having someone to go through this with. The aim is to enter a state where you don't deny anything to yourself. In preparation, I've been forced him to tell the truth all week, following him and calling him on even the most minor of lies. There were things he didn't even realise were untrue. Such is the way of human nature.

* * *

We're stood on the edge of a frozen lake in the middle of an ice-locked forest.

The wind cuts through us and into the depths of our bones. I know that Damien is feeling more or less the same thing as me because he's shivering noticeably. I smile freely, like I wouldn't dare do so in his presence out in the world. I've been playing the great leader for far too long, though Immortal was right, those who cannot follow are doomed to lead.

"What did you say?" asks Damien, looking at me suddenly.

"I didn't. This is the Dreaming, a layer of reality that all humans can tap into but only the truly wise can step into fully into it."

"So this is like heaven?"

"No, the dreaming is a different type of existence. It's a timeless realm of pure objectivity, populated by the very nature of reality itself. It is a place of possibility, where anything can happen. Dreamer taught me all about it that I know. He's who we're here to meet," I tell him, "and if you see a beautiful homespun girl of Irish descent with Emerald green eyes, don't talk to her. There are a lot of Kims here and I don't want to have to deal with any of the nymphs."

"Nymphs?"

"Ideas given form by our minds. There isn't really an aboriginal word for them, other than stating that they're things to avoid. You know that feeling in dreams where your great love makes you feel impossible anger? They're basically made of that."

"You know you're talking like something out of Casper the friendly ghost?"

"Probably," I grin back at him, teeth shining.

"So where are we going?"

"He said he'd meet us in your guilt, wherever that is."

"My guilt?" he looks confused for a second, "you said I'm supposed to let that go."

"If you can honestly say that you've forgiven yourself, then we're not going to have much of a conversation with him, are we?"

"So how do we find my guilt?" he asks smoothly, settling into a nonchalant stance, thumbs through belt loops.

"You really aren't afraid of me, are you?" I ask mildly.

"No, why should I be? You're our glorious leader and you're just a normal man like all the rest of us. You say you could have done more to saved Katie, but I felt like that too. We aren't so different, you and I."

"I'm glad you realise that but you're unfortunately missing some of the key differences. You'll have to overcome those before you'll be free of awe for me."

"Awe?"

"We'll deal with that when we get there. Now, we need to find your guilt."

"How do we do that?"

"I don't know. You're the one who failed to save her."

"What?"

"You heard me," I say, turning my back on him, "you could have saved her but you chose not to. So where would a pathetic little Prince Charming still in his training bra be found in a place like this?"

I'm surprised that he let me finish the statement before trying to him me. It's a good punch, but lacking in conviction.

"What's the matter? Can't you hit me? No wonder she died in terror. Her white night is looking brown around the backside."

Again, he strikes out at me, tears welling in his eyes. I'm not even messing with his perceptions yet but his emotions are changing the landscape well enough. I step back, my ankle beginning to sink into the hot sulphurous rocks and oozing foulness that his anger and shame has brought us to.

"What? No deadly Kung Fu moves? Even here in a place where you're self knowledge is your limit, you can't fight worth a damn. I wonder if she was praying for you to save her, or me, when her lungs were boiling."

His anger flares to the point where he's wreathed in fire, blazing green and black energies coruscating around him. He finally manages to hit me and I tumble back, landing not in the foul, volcanic lake that was behind me but a soft patch of flowers. He stands over me, eyes flaring, breath heaving before a soft voice cuts through the tension with the ease of a swallow cutting through the air.

"I see you still have a talent for finding the inner depths of people, Ronald. That's good, we can use that."

Damien stands, taken aback for a moment, staring at the most unusual of sights. Before him, in a position that my head points directly to, stands Dreamer. His leathery brown skin sags happily from his cheeks and the rest of his bony frame, painted with lines and swirls of white and yellow. His loincloth is pulled up high, like an elderly man's belt and in his hand he clutches a spear and a sack that looks like it was made by hollowing out a toad.

"It's good to see you again, master Dreamer," I say, twisting my head around to see him.

"For the last time, my name is Dougie," he replies in his usual mock-serious tone, thick with his Australian brogue.

"Very well, Master Dougie."

"And quit with that master crap. You know how much that annoys me."

"You assume that isn't the reason for it, you old witchittee munching fool!" I howl with joy as I stand up, Damien having let me up. We embrace and I turn to introduce Damien.

"Damien, this is Dreamer, the Paragon of the Aboriginal dreaming religions. He's going to show you how to transverse this place and how to seek the answers that you need. I've forced you to feel your guilt to get here, now I'm going to leave you in his capable hands and he can teach you whatever he feels that you need. I'll be there when you wake up."

With that, I left him to it, wandering the dreaming until I found who I was looking for.


	40. Chapter 39

Ok, stock of the situation. I'm sealed into what amounts to a large fortress with a tunnel leading to unknown points in the centre of the main chamber. I'm alone here, with nothing but a few faint 50Hz hums to keep me company. As this is Deathray's primary base, I'm going to assume that Kim is stashed here or at the other end of that tunnel. A tunnel, I might add, that seems to have been the source of the three Deathray mechanoids that I encountered while I was getting in here.

I'm currently trying to keep the uses of the Lotus blade in keeping with what the Holo-Wade has been telling me about the capabilities of this Ron, so I'm not really in a position to go stopping bullets with it or anything for now. Similarly, multiplication, which would allow me to happily search this building in minutes is out of the question, along with flying and a list of basic tricks that I've been fond of employing in the past.

Last thing I remember from the last world I was on was Gorilla Fist getting the drop on me and being stuck with a Katana from behind. The time before that I was garrotted from behind by a Muslim extremist from a group that Kim had apparently been trying to prevent come to power in the south of Jordan and the time before that she broke my neck herself because apparently I was a vampire.

I don't know why I keep quantum leaping after death but I'd really like to get back home and stop this serial reincarnation thing. This all started when that Bitch Brockmeir shot me while her brain was in meltdown. Anyway, I have to find this Kim and I pray that I can make some reparations for what I've supposedly done in this world. Why the hell do I care anyway?

Maybe it's because I finally have a chance to save Kim, at least for another me, for a while. The corridor on the south side of the lab has twelve rooms off it, all of which are vacant. I'm just moving across to the north side of the building as I hear the wonderful sound of heavy metallic footfalls coming from the corridor. I stick my head around the lip of the passage, feeling ridiculous in my ninja duds, imagining that I looked like some B-movie villain at that point. Down the corridor, at a distance of about half a mile by my reckoning, is a Deathray. Correction, a column of one, two, three, four, five…six Deathrays. That was a Sesame Street moment if ever there was one.

My options at the moment are fairly limited. I can definitely take those Deathrays down without any real issues but that would require me to use tricks that I can't explain away without the uplink in the suit functioning.

I have it. The power cell on the plasma blaster is a fairly volatile thing and it's simple enough to rig them to explode. It's one of the first tricks we teach to the rookies. Expensive but effective. All I have to do is put it in backwards, snap off the feed control like so, jam it into the safety lock out and pull the trigger.

Then we throw it. Crap. I hurl the little carbine down the tunnel, showing it with my will and wishing that I had actually taken up the Ninja shuriken training instead of simply becoming a badass martial artist. It clatters to a halt in front of the lead Deathray, which extends a telescopic arm to examine the thing for a few seconds before the whole thing overheats, forming a four foot sun in the centre of the tunnel. I'm forced to cover my eyes as the tunnel boils, the concrete runs and the support structure collapses.

Off hand, given the strength of the mechanoids, I'm guessing that I have about four hours before they get through that mess. Thinking quickly, I run into the northern corridor and begin my search anew. In the fifth room, I notice a fine, misty glow in the corner and go in to check it out. I'm in for a treat.

* * *

Quite unlike any biological suspension chamber I've ever seen before, the tube is about three feet across and filled with backlit blue liquid, filled with a continuous upward cascade of fine bubbles. Floating in this, apparently under her own buoyancy, rests the most beautiful creature ever to make it onto God's clean earth. Remembering my old Saturday afternoon Jew Bootcamp as dad liked to call it, she looked like you would imagine Lilith or Eve looking, perfect by the hand of the creator. Each strand of her brown seeming hair floats independently, yet still framing her serene features perfectly, a few strands hanging across her face, obscuring her cheeks. There are bubbles caught in places about her body and these little details around her chin and the base of her nose, the curves of her breasts and the crooks of her arms and pelvis make her seem all the more perfect for the blemishes. 

It's a good thing that as a Megalomaniac, Ray wants to keep everything nice and simple. Red button and a green button. I push both until something changes on the panel. I doubt that there's anything more that I can do. Slowly, the tube begins to drain, allowing her to settle onto a sort of shoulder prop that sits under her elbows. Still so beautiful, even if she is sodden and looking rather off colour in the blue haze that still permeates from the base of the tube. As the tube ascends into the ceiling, I pluck her from her gallows and lay her onto the tarps that draped some of the packing crates that dominate the room.

Suspecting that I'm not going to be welcomed if I stand over her leering when she comes to, I strip off my mask and go out into the lab to search for something that could pass as clothing for her. I'm guessing that I should be quick because if I know hibernation…

* * *

The rooms on the south side were conveniently full of dust sheets and not the horrible clear plastic setups that you see so often these days. Pity, because there's something hauntingly romantic and more than a little sad about a room full of furniture under white cloth. I gather a handful and rummage through one of the desks until some bulldog clips turn up. Knowing Kim and her type 'A' obsessiveness, there's probably clothing in here somewhere, along with a sleeping couch and a private washroom. Unfortunately, I have no damn idea where that is. 

She's stirring gently as I get back. For a moment, five years seem like nothing and I remember yearning [it takes a big man to yearn to watch her sleep like this. Well, not quite like this. Most of those thoughts actually involved her being dryer and somewhat more clothed than she is right now but this is pretty close to some of the hornier ones. One thing you learn, however, is that no matter how attractive she is, your best friend is really hard to spank to.

I reach down with the sheeting and gently gather her up into my arms, holding her gently as she panics a little, thrashing blindly. I begin shushing her and gently rubbing her shoulders and the side of her chest, knowing that shivering is going to take over the moment that she calms even a little.

"Where? Who?" she begins looking around ineffectually, "My eyes, I can't see."

"Be still," I say, for some reason my voice becoming somewhat croaky, "you have hibernation sickness. Your eyesight will return in time."

"Who are you?" she asks, reaching for my face, trying to work out who I am based on the face shape. Her hands brush over my ears and her mouth opens in shock. It seems she's had a little work done on her molars. "Ron?"

"Hey, KP," I say a little more flatly than I would have hoped, "how's it going?"

"Aside from being blind, cold and apparently betrayed by the man I love, not too bad, Ron. Yourself?"

"Land of confusion, beautiful," I smile as the words come out, "apparently, I left you years ago to save you from megalomaniacs and you end up marrying one. How come I can never get a noble sacrifice right, eh?"

"Why did you leave me, Ronnie?" she demands, pulling herself nearer to me, the smell of her hair, even with the synthetic amniotic fluid clinging to her, intoxicating.

"If I even tried to answer that you wouldn't get a satisfactory one."

"What?"

"Lets just assume I have amnesia and leave it at that, ok? Anyway, right now there are at least a fistful of Deathray robot things slowly burrowing their way back into here so is there anywhere we can hide?"

"There is one place Ray's never been so it should take him a while to find it."

Gathering her impromptu toga around herself and not even bothering to go and gather the clothes I know for a fact are here somewhere, she leads me to this hiding place.

* * *

Lying next to Kim on the floor of a small observation gallery above a comparably small operating theatre, I'm pretty sure I should be saying something. I should be telling her about why I left her and what I did while I was away. I should be explaining the whole romantic delusion that I suspect fuelled the creation of the entity Ronin. I should be telling her how much I love her and how that led me to blindly try to sell my own life to save hers. Unfortunately, I can't speak for this Ron or Ronin and I really can't go into my own feelings on the matter. 

It wouldn't be fair to lie and it would seem like a cartoonish tale of magic and mysticism if I told her the actual God's honest of my own life.

"Why did you leave me, Ron?" she asks finally in a flat little voice that makes it seem like more of a demand than her face is singing.

"Honestly, Kim, I have no idea. Much of my memory of my life with you is a blank and I remember things that I'm told never happened. I was minding my own business when Wade comes and breaks me out of a hospital, informing me that I have to stop you marrying Ray Beam because he's a psychotic with a mech-suit. So I charge through hoards of Global Justice and Wade gets there first. I save him and then we end up here after the fake you at the altar starts flipping her lid."

"That's not an answer."

"I haven't been in your world until very recently, our paths diverged long ago."

God damn it. I'm trying every truthful evasion I can because Wade told me that I shouldn't bugger up this world's future history. I hate temporal mechanics.

"Tell me, now, Ron or I'm going to think that you're no better than him."

"What is it with people never believing you when you say that something is probably best not to know?" I sigh before beginning to tell her a story that is mostly hashed together from my own experiences and the brief history that Wade gave me from his Kimmunicator thingy. She seems mostly content with what I'm telling her but obviously senses that there's more to it.

I'm forced to omit the entire history of things involving the Paragons and a whole list of other things that wouldn't make sense in the current context. I end up telling her about very few events and a lot of emotions as a result.

I'm fairly sure that this was supposed to be a powerful homecoming for Ron but I'm not sure how it's going to play out. There really isn't much intensity in me at least because I know how this will play out and I'm getting very tired of keeping low profile with my powers. I suspect that the damage is done already, given how I've explained most of my situation to this Wade and the GJ minions I fought earlier saw me fly. We sit there until I've finished my story then a good while longer, just being there.

Eventually, she reaches over and tries to kiss me. Knowing that this Ron wouldn't resist, I don't either, though I feel no passion for her at all at this juncture. Too much has happened recently for me to hold onto specific feelings for any one of these Kims as I doubt I'm going to be around long enough to do anything but damage. Hell, I keep dying!

Eventually, she stops and looks at me.

"What's wrong, Ron?" she asks quietly, seeing the discomfort in my face. She isn't a bad kisser. Nor was my Kim but that isn't the point. I pick one of the more pointed reasons and simply inform her that we're being watched. At that moment, I feel the irrepressible urge to turn and wave to Ray on the other end of his little camera setup.

I don't need to make a big speech. He's going to boil with impotent anger for a few minutes and order the Deathrays to redouble their efforts to get in here. I get up to get ready. Kim rises to follow me.

"I'm coming with you, Ron," her voice brooks no argument.

"Listen to me straight, Kim, just this once. You're not coming down there to help me beat a bunch of well armed Mechanoids to slag wearing a toga made of dustsheets, hot and sexy and oh so right-sick the mental image of that is. Now sit down and I'll make sure I keep Ray alive so that you can deal with him as you feel necessary."

"Ron, you can't go down there without backup!"

"I have a sword that's atomically sharp and can change into a whole list of other things. I'll be fine."

"Ron, I can't lose you again, let me help you…" she's sounding more and more like a cliché character from some movie with each new sentence. Seeing where this is going, I decide to try the most truly cliché thing I can come up with.

"Baby, I can't fight effectively if I'm afraid for you, stay up here where it's safe and I can keep myself between you and the Deathrays. You're more than welcome to help in later battles but only once we've gotten you dressed up in one of those beautiful, butt-hugging battlesuits I like so much."

With that, I go out to face a lot of very angry Ray Beams.

* * *

Author's Notes: I've now managed to mutilate the wonderful Reunion to the point where its not really recognisable. From this point on, there isn't much resemblance between these sections and Reunion itself. 


	41. Chapter 40

Real sunlight!

Not something that my addled drug-haze filled mind has produced, but real sunlight.

I open my hands to the sky and let it wash over me, taking my cares away from me for a moment. It begins to rain, a gentle, April-shower that washes over me, taking aches and grime off me like I'm shedding a skin. Feeling such freedom that I can scarcely remember, I begin to laugh, great peals of laugher born of relief and happiness until tears begin to run down my cheeks, mixing with the rain and the grime.

After her little horror-fest, Shego finally broke through my outer defences. All the scenarios with Kim, all the little tests; was I willing to walk across hot coals to save a mere clone of Kim, was I willing to get shot to prevent them shooting a girl whose only crime against me is not remembering the last 5 years. The true horror of the experience is that each one of those poor girls was honestly Kim as far as it was possible to measure with medical or psychological sciences. Perfect copies of her at the time of her death, memories and all.

Unfortunately, like most clones, she seemed distinctly soul-less to me. That isn't really the right word but it fits well. Reality has already moved the essence that was Kim Possible to another place and now anything that takes her form simply seems _wrong_ to be around.

Saving a girl's life has some intense reactions, especially when you're an older, more hansom version of her oldest friend. I spent a lot of time fending off the advances of the various Kims until I finally gave in. I'm truly impressed that that bitch Shego managed to ruin even that for me. That said, until the faecal matter hit the oscillating unit, it was some Bon-diggetty sex.

It turned out that Shego hadn't been informed of all of my capabilities before this little project began. Despite the power inhibitors, they hadn't gone to the trouble of cutting the lotus blade free from my flesh. I get the feeling that it was just a symptom of the powers they were suppressing rather than a force to be reckoned with all of its own.

I cut her a nasty scar on my way out, and destroyed the Kim cloning facility so that no more of the poor things could be used as fodder for abuse by Drakken or Shego. I sensed that from the crazy bitch whenever she was in the room with both of us. She really enjoyed torturing them but was getting kind of jaded.

* * *

Stumbling through the rain, I realize exactly how docile the mood-emulator chips make the population. In the pouring rain, I'm wandering around with my right arm effectively skinned, my clothes, such as they are shredded and I look like I was present for an explosion at a concrete factory. No one bats an eyelid.

I take a few moments, wondering if I would be better begging or simply walking into one of the stores, taking what I need and walking out. I opt for the latter. Again, no-one bats an eyelid, so content and disinterested are they all. First a pack of tissues and a half gallon of antiseptic wash, then a change of clothes are taken without comment.

Finally, I walk into a shoe-shop and look the older man in the eyes. He isn't glazed over like the others. I walk over and find the nastiest looking trainers I can.

"You got these in a size nine?" I ask, hoping that he'll just go into the back and then I can just walk out with them.

"Are yeh sure yeh don't want te try on a cheaper pair, Lad? Seeing how you don't have a wallet in those new, shiny pants of yours."

"You noticed? You're not mood enhanced."

"Quick for a young un. No, I like to keep my mind intact, thank you very much."

"Well, I guess I'll be going, seeing how I don't rip people off who give a crap about it. Thanks for your patience." I turn to leave, actually trying to stick to a code of honour that seems somewhat outdated to many of the younger or angrier members of the rebellion.

"I didn't say that Lad. You're treating me with respect, which rules out a Liver and you're not expecting me to just hand over my stuff now that you know I'm not a mood-user, which rules out one of the rebels. I'm sure I can accommodate a lad in trouble. Why don't you come through to the back? We'll see what we can do," he says, smiling at me as he walks past me and turns the sign on the door to closed and locks it.

"You said that the rebels would be demanding things…" I begin as I follow him into the back of the shop, past rows and rows of shoes in neat little cardboard boxes, "but I was a rebel and we never assumed anything or stole from the public."

"Ha, well, that hasn't been true for a while. Last I heard, that legendary leader of theirs was dead and with no-one to keep them in check, they got all kinds of presumptuous. Then, that new fella what leads them made it clear that all of the supporters of the rebellion were going to have to make sacrifices for the 'greater good' as he called it." Each word is snarled out with contempt. He really has been through a lot here. Wait a minute…

I search my mind for all the old supporters of the rebellion. There were a lot of them, most of whom just acted as dead letterboxes or gave us boltholes when we had to leave a base. There were a few who gave more, risked things and gave food or the like whenever they could, acting as direct middlemen for our more honest dealings. Squinting and mentally altering his accent a little, I realise who I'm talking to. It's a little harder than it would be normally because I can't see his knees.

"Duff? Is that you?"

"Yeh know mah name Sonny-Jim?"

"Yeah, I used to defeat you on a regular basis. World's most dangerous golfer my blonde bum-fluff."

"The Buffoon? What're you doing here?"

"First, where is here exactly and what did you mean after my death?"

"We're in Essex, three towns from Middleton, wi' a lovely wee golf-course and I never said a thing about your death."

"You said after the death of the legendary leader of the rebellion and unless I'm mistaken, I was the one who organised it from a bunch of tiny little cells into what it was when I was captured, now what happened?"

"You were the leader? I never thought you'd amount to anything but roadkill."

"Don't push it Duff," I warn, fast running out of patience.

"After Drakken announced that you were dead and paraded a body of an older man around, showing that the rebellion was now leaderless, most of the cells started to ignore the orders of the Middleton cell. Things got bad for a while, the whole thing began to fall apart at the seams and some of them began to use Terrorist tactics and actually hurt humans.

"Into the vacuum, stepped a crop of new leaders and the last one standing was the new glorious leader. Runs the whole thing like a street-gang if you ask me. Hoards information and stuff too. I washed my hands of the whole deal when they started to talk about sacrifices for the greater good. If I'm miserable, I may as well turn on my chip, if you know what I mean."

I ponder all this for a minute, thinking that I should want to reclaim the leadership of the rebellion, set it back on track. Then I wonder if this new guy might have a better idea of how to actually win this war. Only way to know is to meet the man. That means I need to contact the rebellion, preferably the Middleton cell, and arrange it.

"Any idea who this great leader is?"

"Aye, he's that wee pompous laddie that you brought with you to Tokyo to stop me the first time."

"You're shitting me? Will Du?"

* * *

I developed most of the operating methods of the underground myself, albeit mostly through watching old war movies and the like. There's a lot of practical stuff to be read on the subject if you happen to be in China, considering Mau was one of the pioneers of guerrilla tactics.

The unit would have moved on the moment I had been missing for a day. That's the running assumption on how long a person under torture can hold out. The catch is that they would have left a lot of surprises in the old base to catch anyone who moved in but that are removable should they need the place again. There's also likely to be someone watching the place.

I'm not going to waltz into tunnels of the city and wander to the old base, however. I'm planning to waltz into the tunnels and wander aimlessly until I spot one of the tunnel-rats. I know they'll be there and frankly, I'm a hard man to hide from anyway.

Three T-junctions and down a waterfall in the middle of downtown Middleton leads to a huge collection of cisterns that are used for settling sediment. They have screens at the back and a crude automated system sweeps the crap into a narrow intake so that it can be processed. It's a crude system but it keeps them from having to build the same thing out in the open.

Looking around at the grime slicked walls, I hear all the tiny echoes of the water's roar and I can virtually see the room in sounds, and in the shadows, I find what I'm looking for; an obstruction that doesn't look like it's there.

"If you're going to shoot me, you'll have to use something other than that friend. I'll just fall over and have a headache," I call out to the figure strapped to the roof. He's holding what looks to be a Neural Stunner with a stock butt.

"You're one of the clans?"

"No. I'm one of the blood," I respond with the old sign without thinking about it.

"That's an old sign."

"I'm an old man."

"What the hell are you doing out here? There's no missions scheduled and Du throws a gasket any time anyone goes wandering," he said, descending from the roof on a harness. I trained the man so I'm hoping her recognizes me.

"I've been away for a while," I grin as he virtually chokes on his own words.

* * *

I know it sounds like a really dumb tactic, but against Drakken, his attention span is so low and he's so impatient that he'd never think to look in a place where we'd already hidden. For this reason, we tend to end up using old hideouts over and over.

The old steelworks is one of the oldest of our bases and has thus far never actually been found, simply abandoned about a dozen times since we first set it up. There are only so many places to hide in the tri-city area, but Drakken never really noticed that.

We step through the door and I take in the sights and the smells of the place. A lot of people are gathered around the edges of the room, on gantries and behind railings, staring at me with a mixture of fascination and dread. The dogs are brought out and they sniff at me, being coaxed into wariness. Smiling mildly, I kneel down and pat Rex on the head as he lunged forward and begins licking my face. Most of the onlookers relax for a few seconds but then a kafuffle breaks out at the far end of the big underground room.

I look up and see a fistful of armoured figures coming towards me. Duff was right, they do look more like a street-gang. Wade, the twins and Barkin are all there, acting with complete deference to the central figure, despite the fact that he's much smaller than any of them.

"Have him bound and brought to the interrogation room. I want to know what trickery Drakken has sent out for us this time," the hollow voice of the small Asian man hammers around the room like thunder in a canyon. Standing in a rage, I turn to him and scream out:

"Du, what the hell have you done to my Underground?"

* * *

Author's Note: Not entirely sure this chapter actually works but it's presented here without a rewrite. As each chapter is independent from the last, i'm sure i can come back and rewrite it if need be. opinions please. 


	42. Chapter 41

"I don't know Wade," I sigh at the young man sat opposite me. It's telling that I feel like an old man these days but I'm certainly mature enough for a whole roomful.

"Seriously, Ron, we need you. Middleton's under martial law and since James left I've been basically taking care of the twins. If it weren't for your parents then they'd be in real trouble."

"The twins?" I ask, suddenly worried. Anne was fine if a little in denial when I left. Aside from spending her time hoping that Kim would walk through the door she'd been fairly compos mentis.

"You're kidding, right?" he demands, looking rather shocked at my honestly blank look, "Ron, Anne Possible has been on the downslope since you left. First she spent all of her time making sure that things were ready when Kim came home, then she progressed on to acting like she was there all the time. Hell, she went completely off the deep end when she started wearing coloured contacts and grew her hair out. Seriously, Ron, it's like she's been trying to somehow resurrect Kim and it's been killing the boys. Seriously, she'll disappear for half the night and be brought home stunned by a Diablo robot. They need you to take care of them, especially Anne."

"Wade, I don't really know if it's my place to get involved. Wait a minute," I pause, something slipping into place, finally, "did you say James left?"

"Yeah, took most of the brightest and best minds of our generation and built a city on the moon about three months ago. We haven't seen him since and the bastard left Anne high and dry. Not that he was a terrific husband before that point."

I knew roughly what Wade meant. Mr Dr P had been known to hit Anne in the month or so before I left, something that even in my very dim view of the man over recent years I would have never foreseen from the gentle bumbler.

"You want me to come back to Middleton, into the lion's den to act as a surrogate father to Jim and Tim?"

"While I don't think there's anyone better qualified left in the world, I was thinking of something a little more active."

"Active? Like what?"

"Well," began Wade, "I was thinking of starting a little rebellion, you know, just something to get under Drakken's skin."

"Look, Wade, my training here isn't complete," I say, gesturing around, "until then, I can't even think of going out into the world and fighting Drakken."

* * *

"I hear your young friend is here to bring you back into the world," says Immortal as I walk past him into the small ring of stones and sat down cross legged. I concentrate for a second and after the first of the flat round stones begins to rise off the floor, I give him my answer.

"I haven't decided if I will go yet. I don't want to abandon my training until it is complete."

"I did not ask whether you were going or not, simply if your friend, Lodden was here or not. And for point of reference, you won't be abandoning your training if you complete it."

I look up from the rocks and refocus my other senses to keep track of their locations as I stack them with my mind. He's staring at me with a fixed expression.

"You really should make a habit of listening to what is actually being asked, rather than thinking about your next point while I'm talking, Ron," he finishes.

"Awareness of the moment?"

"Awareness of the moment. Plus it makes you seem so much more intelligent in the long run," he smiled openly, something that usually means something bad is about to happen.

"I'll never get the hang of you're dry British wit, Master," I smile as I look back to my rocks, finishing off the nine foot statue of Yori as I apply enough force to melt the rocks together.

"I'd give it a nine for control and an eight point seven for artistic impression. Why's she crying though?"

"That was how she looked when I last saw her…" I reply, more than a little sadly.

* * *

Immortal's training has a few advantages and while he was making a point of smashing open the dam that held my guilt about Yori in check, I experienced the whole of the mountain top.

Wade sat across from Yamanuchi Sensei, regarding the smaller man with respect. He has no idea how the small man does the things he does but he still has great respect for what to him was simply a science he has no way of measuring.

"You feel," Sensei says at last, "that Stoppable-san should return to the west in order to help you lead a rebellion. Why would you assume that he would want to, let alone be effective in this role?"

"Yamanuchi-Sensei, maybe I've been misinformed but you trained him as a ninja. They were pretty much the original guerrilla warriors and he's powerful beyond words. You do remember that you called me in to help him get the best out of that sword of his."

"His power as a warrior and his individual understanding of the way of the Ninja is not enough to make him a great leader. You would have him be a weapon of your crusade?"

"I doubt that you could make Ron into a weapon if you tried. He's too human by half. And completely aside from his own abilities, he's the former side-kick to Kim Possible. That's got to count for something in the eyes of those he'll be leading."

"I think you overestimate the amount her reputation rubbed off on him and more to the point that that would make any difference to those he would surround himself with."

"I don't understand, master Sensei."

"Master Sensei is redundant. Yamanuchi-Sensei or just Sensei."

"Very well, Sensei, I do not understand that you mean."

"Think who will be the core of the rebellion that you seek to gather under his flag. Would any one of them care that he was the associate of Kim Possible? Most don't even remember him because he let her take the glory and she never made any attempt to share it."

"Now that you mention it, probably not."

"And how many of them would respect Stoppable-San for who he is alone?"

"That would boil down to maybe two, plus a few leaders in the other insurgent cells."

"So is there really any need for Stoppable-San to leave his training without completing it so that your rebellion has a leader other than you?"

Wade studied the ground before the thin meditation cushion on which he was sat.

"I guess not."

"So why travel all the way around the world to bother a man who has tried to escape the world you wish him to save?"

"Because he's the bravest coward on earth and that's what makes him so damn dangerous."

"Now, I think, we are getting to the heart of the matter," replied Sensei with his usual level of Yoda-like calm.

* * *

"So he raped her?" asks Immortal, parrying a blow that could have levelled houses and mountains with a faint turn of his hand. Behind him part of the mountain shook slightly and a tiny cascade of dust came loose.

"Yeah, I've just made my way through this whole place, killing those two guards, not something I'm particularly proud of, and I get there and he's gloating about taking seconds."

A trio of parallel strikes are easily avoided as I flipped back at virtually the speed of sound and landed lightly on one foot, kicking up a small tuft of smoke.

"So…what? You go in there and beat him to death?" he shot back as he closed the ground, Windsinger appearing and dancing between us.

"You know this part. I had Yori kiss him, willed the lotus into his stomach and then turned control of it over to his subconscious guilt. He tore himself to shreds in less than three minutes, yelling his bitter anger the whole way." His next strike is beautiful, a flexing strike using the torsion of uncrossing his legs to bring a whip strike hand movement to play. He does this with such speed and power that even as I dodge it, the shockwave cuts open the fabric of my shirt.

"Ah yes, that was what prompted us to think about the lotus more carefully," he twists again, bringing Windsinger's point around in a neat little dash strike. Damn it he's still so much faster than me.

"Then I took her back to her home after I drew the lotus back together. I carried her most of the way through the streets of Tokyo, and kept getting people covering their eyes as I was basically naked save for what was left of Fukoshima's clothing." Parry, block, thrust, form the blade, strike, defend. "When I got her back I showered her carefully and put her to bed. First and last thing she said to me after Fukoshima started dying that night was, "Ronald-Chan, I am sorry. I was saving it for you and now it is gone," can you believe that was what she was the most torn up about?"

"She loves you very much, Ron, you can't hold that against her." The air virtually turns to glass in front of my face and I slam into it.

"Hey! I thought you said no transmutations!"

"I didn't transmute anything. Two inch punch like a pro."

"You thrust so hard that the air turned hard in front of me?"

"Yup." I'm forced to roll as fists as fast as lasers begin to strike the air that I occupied seconds before.

"Nice."

"You were saying?"

"Oh, yeah. I came back the next morning, hey don't give me that look, I went back to my hotel. There is nothing the Ron man is, but smooth. Anyway, I returned the next morning and ate breakfast with Nooni-San. We were still pointedly failing to use honorifics. Eventually, Yori emerged from her room to join us and I shuffled over to let her in, making no real effort to be the gentleman or anything. Didn't seem like it would make any real difference if I did. I handed her a bowl and we ate some rice together in silence for a while."

I pause for a moment as a strike hits me. It actually hit me and would have broken three of my ribs if I didn't roll with it.

"Continue," demands Immortal as he presses his attack. I back up slightly, adjusting my balance and defending myself against the next hail of strikes.

"Now, it's about this point that I realise that Nooni and Samo are both staring. I have no idea why and I turn to Yori and whisper a question into her ear. She laughs with one of her 'American Misunderstanding' comments and explains that she's been a Hikikomori, a shut in and they haven't actually seen her in a long time. At least not until the night before last when I showed up. I grinned, made some inane comment about bringing her out of her shell and nudged her in the ribs. She smiled back and told me that I had saved her from her misery."

I block an upward cut from Windsinger with my Katana and shift backwards.

"Anyway, I thought this was a strange thing to say and I spent a lot more time with her, trying to figure out what she meant. In her room, she had a little scrap book of things that I'd done. Nothing creepy, not a shrine or anything, but a record. My adventures. The first time I fought Monty, the time I saved Kim from an exploding golf ball, a swatch about when I saved a cat from a tree after Kim stubbed her toe, for heavens sake. And there were passages from Kim's diary, detailing all the things that I had done to save her. Said in that way, it was easy to see why someone could be so in love with me."

"So you fell in love?" he asks as his next strike hammers through the afterimage of my head. No transmutation but he never said anything about acceleration or manipulation of movement.

"No. Nothing so coarse. I felt her love and flowed with it. I did everything that I could to keep myself open and I realised that I already cared for her a great deal. There was love there, the kind that I have always had for everyone I meet and there was a lot more besides that. I took a chance and kissed her. I kept on kissing her and loving her and making love to her until Sensei projected into the room, demanding that I return. She was heart-broken and she was adamant that she wouldn't come up here with me. There were tears and we parted and in protest, I walked all the way back here."

"Some walk," Immortal commented as I finally found an opening in his otherwise impenetrable defence and locked his throat with an Eagle's claw.

"Indeed."

* * *

"I don't know Master Dreamer," I said, dropping my weight smoothly to the ground with practiced ease.

"You really think that I'm going to let you go into the dreaming without an escort after last time? And that whole thing after you drop the boy off with me in six years time is right off."

"Whoa, hold on there, I haven't gotten the hang of the extra-temporal thing yet."

"Ah, you're still holding onto your memories in the dreaming? We're going to have to work on that."

"I'm not supposed to remember anything?"

"If you can think of a better way of saying it, I'm all ears. You exist simultaneously at every point in reality that you've been alive in the dreaming. You're meant to know everything simultaneously."

"You're kidding, right?"

"Does this look like the face of a kidder?" he asks sternly, pointing at his face. We both manage to maintain our composure for about four seconds before we both keel over laughing.

"So I'm supposed to be equipresent in the Dreaming?"

"We've been through this before, Ron, the dreaming is an absolute, objective reality. It's completely timeless and connected to every moment of existence. Only if you think you're in one time there are you actually in one time there."

Together we slip into the cerulean twists and turns of the Dreaming coterminous to my mind and go exploring once again.

I sit down next to Wade, knowing what he's going to ask. It doesn't come. I sit there waiting for more time than I care to count, waiting for him to ask me to lead his rebellion and it doesn't come.

"Ron, I know that you think I'm going to try to persuade you to lead this rebellion idea of mine. I'm not, I'm just asking that once you're ready, you'll consider coming to help us."

"Whoa," I say, completely taken aback, "you see, I finally completed my training in crossing the Dreaming. I know that I'm going to lead your damn rebellion. I know of a lot of emotions connected to it, brotherhood, despair, hatred, pride, joy and hope. And love. A whole lot of love. I'll lead your rebellion once I've learned everything there is to be taught here. Not a moment sooner, though."

"That's so much more than I feel comfortable asking you after talking with Sensei."

"You're going to have to be more specific than that. I speak all languages equally and pretty much everyone here has the title of master."

"Yamanuchi-Sensei."

"Ah, he's got a gift for making you stare at the bits of yourself that you don't like, doesn't he?"

"You got that right."

"Anyway, you go back to Middleton and start on the ground work. You know you're going to be the guy that makes the whole shebang tick, even if I'm the leader of the organisation. I'm counting on you Wade."

"I won't let you down."

"Wade, there's no way that you could physically disappoint me. Take care of the Twins and Anne for me too. I'll be back some time soon probably."

At this point, I begin to hear screaming outside.

Rushing to the door of the tent, I fling it open just in time to witness the tent next door being obliterated. There are more than a dozen Diablos storming the camp and maybe twice that many Montys trying to fight them off. Drawing out the lotus, I leap forward, then dance back, feather light across the top of the tent to scythe the Diablo preparing to fire on me in half. True to form, the half that hasn't got the power core crumbles to dust while the other half begins to heal itself, regrowing all that it had lost.

I plunge into the fight, knowing that I'm more than capable of taking them all down but it's quicker and easier and all around less bloody if I take out the signal. There's too much terrain here for a long distance transmitter because Diablos work on UHF signals. That means that it's either satellite beamed or there's a transmitter around here somewhere. If there was a Digdugg around here, I'd suspect that but there isn't.

A trio of Montys fall back towards my position, firing great blasts of energy at the metal monsters.

"There's too many of them! They know how we fight and there are more coming up the hill!" one of them announces in his prim English accent.

"You hold them up and protect those that need protecting!"

"Why aren't you multiplying and moving to help me?"

"I'm going to go after the source!" I reply. His mention of them knowing how we fight brought a thought to mind. Taking to the air, I fly across the camp, forming great fists of the particulate Lotus and smashing Diablos out of my path with growing distain.

Smoothly, shaking away a tiny piece of anger for not thinking of this before, I land neatly in the mouth of Sensei's tiny meditation cave. He looks at me for a moment before I slam a fist into his face, knocking him unconscious. The little man crumples like damp cardboard.

Outside, the Diablos break up into smoke and drift away on the wind, only the destruction they wrought marking their passage.

Where Sensei had sat lies Arahat, who's slowly rising back into a sitting position, rubbing his lip.

"It doesn't discomfort me anymore, but pain is still something I can feel. You could have just told me to stop," he says quietly.

"I really didn't feel I had the time to waste asking you. There could have been more to the test."

"As well there was," announces Immortal as he steps out of the shadow behind me.

"Did I pass?"

"Only you can answer that. You have proven that you have learned our lessons well, but it is up to you whether you are ready to do what must be done out there."

"I am ready," I reply, never more certain of anything.

* * *

Author's Note: I'm going to miss writing these chapters, though there are still things from the mountain that need explaining, i guess... 


	43. Chapter 42

I drop and roll, the heavy bulk of my rifle smacking against my breastplate. I'm not wearing my custom battle armour, but a cheap, poorly made suit of composite armour. At least it tends to stop shrapnel and has a good resistance to kinetic blasters like those used on the newer model Bebes. Seems the damn things got an upgrade while I was in dreamland.

Part of the ruin behind be explodes violently and for the umpteenth time tonight, I curse the name of William Du. The little bastard seems to have messed up his instructions once again and that anger makes it difficult for me to concentrate properly. In many ways, I'm stuck with only half of myself as a weapon, along with this crappy blaster.

Hunkering down into a corner, I check the yield on the weapon. I'm down to about forty percent of the thing's charge and the shouting is still on the distant horizon. Under equipped, underhanded and three of the kids with me are behaving like scared mice. Only Bonnie seems to be holding together and every time I've tried to talk to her in the last couple of months, she simply informs me that she's Du's girl now. That wasn't even what I was asking.

She's holed up on the other side of the main factory complex with a pair of terrified young girls who seem hardly able to hold a rifle. Most of the old guard are conspicuously missing from the rebellion, a fact that I find rather troubling. Apparently, the last three bases they held up in were attacked by Bonnies with high yield rifles. I have to say that it's odd that the normally procedure obsessed Du had veteran soldiers acting as door guards, conveniently every time. Regardless, I need to figure out a way of getting them to better cover than the narrow edge they're hiding behind.

Regarding silently how much impact a small amount of emotional conflict can have on my ability to fight and use my niftier powers, I drag a small lump of power free of my central tantien and throw it into a grenade as I heft it clean through the fibre board separating me from the forces firing on Bonnie and her girls.

"Bon-Bon, move, now!" I howl, closing the ground almost instantly and grabbing one of the girls (I later find out that she's called Betty of all things and basically hurling her across the room to where I was previously. Bonnie pauses for a second at the raw demonstration of power but begins moving as I shock her out of her stupor by screaming, "Now!" at her.

As I pull back, I keep glancing at the beautiful ass that I've been missing all this time, all the while checking that she and the other girl are still alright. Fire tears the ground up around me and I fire back at the trio of humanoids stalking out of the wreckage. Each one has the perfect metallic features of a Norse beauty and a strange, outdated hairstyle, three simultaneous husky voices echo together, making the same statements.

"Surrender to Bebe, Dr Drakken commands eet."

If I'm going to slay the damn things, I need to get hold of one of their blasters. I don't like making a habit of using the lotus against anything that may get analysable data on my abilities and limits so I'm tied into trying to take these damn things out with conventional weapons. The best part of this is that we don't even seem to have any Phase Disruptors. What sort of idiot sends a group out without weapons capable of even pissing a Diablo off in this day and age?

I remember now, he assured the rest that they wouldn't be necessary…

* * *

"I don't really understand what you mean, Stoppable. This is a simple reconnaissance mission, there will be no Diablo interference and if there is, you can simply fall back before it. I really don't see why you are pressing this issue." 

"Listen you pompous little yellow bastard," I hammer out before I can stop myself, "I bowed to your leadership because you seemed to have gotten to the point that you had learned to listen to others! I'm not leading a mission with patently inadequate equipment!"

"That's a valid point, Stoppable. This is Ms. Rockwaller's mission, not yours. You will obey her orders in the field."

"I'm going to be taking orders from Bon-Bon?" I ask incredulously. I'd normally be more than happy to follow her orders but she's been noticeably unwilling to talk to me recently, something that isn't exactly conducive to leadership.

"Is there a problem with that?" asks Bonnie, stepping out from behind a partition screen. How big is this frigging office? Most of the new kids are hemmed in together like cattle.

"No, Bonnie, nothing at all. So when should I tell the others to be ready for the pre-mission briefing?"

"They've already been briefed and are suiting up. They know what they need to know."

"What's that, Bonnie? How to obey orders?"

"I take it they need something else?" she demands petulantly.

"I taught you all to think for yourselves and how to take the reigns and call the shots in the field. I doubt most of these kids know how to keep their rifles working and point them in the right direction, let alone come up with a workable strategy under pressure."

"Mr Stoppable, I suggest that you just go into the field with them and see what my troops are capable of for yourself," Du replies coolly, steepling his fingers, his elbows rested on the desk before him.

"Du, this is the fifth mission you've sent me on and they've universally had something that wasn't mentioned in them and universally, the rookies I've been with have frozen up."

"Maybe they're having trouble coping with a living legend fighting with them, Stoppable. The others had a lot more time to get used to that."

It troubles me that this explanation seems to be holding water.

* * *

22 percent power and I'm less than a dozen yards from the Bebes. They're also in the process of cycling up to go to hyper-acceleration. I have only two advantages at the moment. Bebes are overconfident in a way that makes them susceptible to inventive tactics and bravery on the part of people and secondly, and perhaps most importantly, they have no idea who they're dealing with. 

Setting the weapon to maximum yield and diving to the side, I obey the impulse listing that Kim's knowledge of combat provides me with. The one on in the lead is going left. Three two one.

The blast catches it square in the hair, blasting its metal quiff off its head. For a moment, it shudders to a halt and stands confused, attempting to point its kinetic blaster at me. I step through its guard, whipping the barrel of the exhausted blaster around to hammer it full in the face. Conveniently, the receiver for the hive mind system is located in the hair and their spatial awareness is based on the combination of three viewpoints.

The blow knocks its aim off for long enough for me to grab the weapon and jam my hand into the trigger-guard. The second one will be closing about…now.

Discharging the blast blindly forward, I notice the way that the blur ahead of me alters very slightly and another twist cuts off the thing's evasive manoeuvre, striking it and catapulting it across the room into a pile of machine wreckage.

Right on cue, the third Bebe slams into me in perfect football style. I'm carried across the room, smashing into the wall with a force that shakes my fillings. Well, not that I have any fillings anymore, I got that as a door prize with the gift of tongues. What I do have, however, is the Bebe's blaster. It strikes me that I'm been doing things this dumb for a long while, ever since I started on the whole hero/sidekick deal, though using a beating from the opponent to get their weapon off them seems to be a new one.

Knowing I have no time to think about such things, I roll onto my front, firing a blast off into the closing blur. It manages to dodge, but that isn't the point. The girls are out of the way and hopefully in cover. The Bebe's detour gives me the half a moment I need to bounce off the wall onto my feet.

I whip my fist out, producing the characters of my tattoo and forming a small blade, severing the arm of one of the approaching Bebes. With each one cut from the network, they get dumber, a factor of the limiting design that Drakken implemented to avoid them getting too much of an ego. When there's only three of them, they have limited scope of imagination but feel each loss all the more acutely.

Folding at the knees, I drop into a deep stance and snap my hips away from the first Bebe to thrust an open palm strike into the metal of the other one. The blade protruding from beneath my hand cuts deep and the strike itself does what it's supposed to, shattering the composite materials of the thing's armour as if it were made of tortilla chips. Grabbing now, I find that my hand is filled with a combination of sharp pieces of metal and servo wiring. I drag my hand free of the mess and the Bebe stares at me in disbelief for a moment before it's hyper acceleration module goes completely haywire, shaking it to pieces. I turn back to the one whose arm I severed, finding it reeling from the loss of its sister. Like I said, the dangers of limited spatial awareness. A point blank shot from a cannon is usually enough to shut them up. One of these days, I'm going to get Wade to autopsy one of these things, find out where its power core is.

In that brief second, I drag its cannon up to meet the side of its and trigger the thing to fire with a mental impulse. Its head evaporates into a cloud of shards even as I drag the weapon around to bring it to bear on the last on. Unaware of it's sister's plight, it seems to be trying to find the largest collection of rebels to attack. It doesn't notice me as I stroll up behind it and disinterestedly blast the back of its head off.

"Bonnie! Where are you, Babe? Is everyone alright?"

"Penny's wounded, Ron!" comes a terrified cry from behind a shattered fragment of wall. Instantly, I set to work.

"Joan, Sebastian, Phil! Set up a perimeter guard while I see if we can move her. Who the hell has the med-kit?" I demand. It transpires that Penny has the damn thing anyway. At least I don't have to look too far.

"Bonnie. Bonnie!" I yell at her. She's locked into a grief cycle, muttering that it's all her fault. I've seen her do this before and Penny really doesn't have time for me to talk her out of this. I slap her across the cheek. Once, hard. She looks up from wherever she was and anger flares in her eyes. "Head in the game, Bon-Bon! Strip the wounded area and do a triage on it, I need to know what we're dealing with."

"Why does this keep happening, Ron?" she asks me as she forces her fingers into the wound on Penny's shoulder, dragging a fragment of concrete out, much to Penny's distress.

"What do you mean?" I ask quietly, concentrating to flood Penny's body with endorphines.

"Every time I lead a mission, even if you're with me, someone gets hurt!" I just grin at this statement.

"That's pretty much the point of being a rebel, Bonnie, hurting stuff."

"I mean people, Ron. Synthetics don't count. Every time I've led a mission since you disappeared, something like this has happened!"

"Not to harsh your private crazy time, Bon, but look around you. That Sebastian kid scarcely knows how to hold a rifle and Penny spent most of the fight panicking. They both should have had the basics drilled into them to the point where they do this crap in their sleep, they both aught to stop thinking when the fighting starts. What happened to all the stuff I taught to the old guard?" The whole conversation is conducted while we strip and clean the wounds on Penny and patch them as beast we can. We really need to get her to Anne or a similarly skilled doctor but we aren't really so blessed.

"Most of that went out when Du took control. He wanted a military skill set taught, not all the meditation and drills that you brought in. Most of the old guard were sent away like Brick or browbeaten like Wade and the twins. I'm treated like a trophy by him, Ron, have you any idea what that feels like?"

"Bonnie, I never thought I'd actually hear you lament something like that."

"You treated me like the most important thing in your world, even when I was a bitch. A girl could get hooked on that sort of thing."

"Bonnie, you're my friend. That is the most important thing in the world to me. Now help me with her."

She cuts me a sidelong look that shows a little disappointment but I really don't have time to worry about that right now. Hauling Penny to her feet, I set the group into a withdrawal, even as a unit of Diablos closes in on our position. Sebastian, the last one through the manhole, gets himself a flamer tan and falls yelping into the water.

Right now, I have no idea what our objectives were when we set out and the only thing I'm sure of is that I want to wring Will Du's scrawny neck.

* * *

Author's Note: This hasn't been proofed as a result of being unable to get at the computer this is on for a few days. The joys of siblings when you're home from uni. If you spot gaffs, let me know and i'll correct them. It would have been nice if had warned me that most of the punctuation on the keyboard doesn't work here. 


	44. Chapter 43

The scope of the scheme here is nigh unbelievable. The island has been rigged up with an arcane summoning circle the like of which my training knows nothing. That said, I'm not all that well versed in summoning rituals, only what the advisers that Immortal was able to bring to the table could point out. There were a couple of Paladins there but for the most part I was forced to rely on Pagan's rather patchy knowledge of the subject. Anyway, the basic gist is that the more sides, the worse it gets, up to seven with Orcus, the lord of the seventh hell. Anything larger and things start to get a little interesting.

This seal has 49 sides. It's not actually one summoning circle but seven overlaid on top of each other. Normally, the lines being broken would make the thing untenable but I think what's going on here is that the whole thing performs a sort of arcane positive reinforcement, though that's only conjecture.

If a five sided diagram can summon lesser demons and bind them and things the size of houses can be kept under control by a six sided one, I hate to think what this thing could do.

At least it provides me with a central point. The seal is off centre and the ritual will have to be conducted in the middle of the damn thing if it's going to work. Thus, I know roughly were I'm looking and I can assume that it will be near the bottom.

* * *

"Senior, how much of this damn island is missing, exactly?" I demand into the radio headset. I'm rather annoyed as you can probably tell.

"Well, at one point, I decided that I would rather like to take up base jumping and spelunking again, after the X-games. This is the second island that I have owned after my son's fiscal misadventure. I bought the biggest former missile silo that I could find."

"How deep is the shaft I'm looking at?"

"Assuming that you mean the central one instead of one of the smaller ones, then about a mile." If he didn't have such a rich, creamy, soothing voice, I'd still be yelling.

"Don't suppose there's a lift?"

"Why would I put a lift into it? Where would the fun be in that?"

Sigh. Some days it just isn't worth being humanity's last, best hope.

"Fine. I'll be back later. I don't suppose this radio will work down there?"

"Of course it will. I'm an extreme sports fan, not a fool, master Stoppable. What if I were hurt?"

"And you still didn't install a lift?"

"The Henchco. rescue teams come with jetpacks."

"Ah."

* * *

I leap into the dark, hoping all the way down that I can fly. As I fall, I begin to wonder, why? Why did I jump?

I stretch my mind outwards a little, thankful that I'm not being observed by anyone. Senior was complaining earlier that the monitoring system down here wasn't working. Senior didn't ask if I had a parachute, he just assumed. That's good. I won't have to do any explaining later. The ground approaches steadily and I spread myself wide and slow my fall to a trickle, dusting down without so much as a sound.

I'm not all that well attuned to magic in a western sense, mostly because it's not something that I've been trained with. There isn't a religion based around it. I do however know what energy feels like. Down here, there is a nexus, like a huge amount of pressure trying to get in but being held back by its own action. I can feel it forming almost a whirlpool at the edges of the shaft. I'm stood in the eye of the storm here. I also have an indication that it's malevolent. The talisman I have painted onto the inside of a matchbook just spontaneously combusted in my pocket, much to my consternation.

Tearing off my pants and stamping on the fire, I decide that I might as well strip down to the Lycra body glove I've go underneath. If there's something I learned with Kim, it's that it never hurts to have a second line of defence, especially round the crotch, especially when wearing tight-ish pants. I may look slightly gay, something of a cardinal sin back in the mid-west, but I'm enough of a man to know where I stand.

Throwing caution to the wind, and knowing that frankly, I'm to have to fight whatever he's summoned anyway, I call out into the dark.

"Nice choice of occult setting. Throw in a spooky library and you'll have some real noir going on in here."

Why can't I ever be serious? It's not like I'm even doing it to disguise my fear anymore.

"Young man, you really have no idea whom you are dealing with." The reply is spoken by a feminine voice in possibly the most flawless English I have ever heard. It has a rich accent to it but nothing that covers any of the meaning or distorts any of the words. Based on the fact Monty's voice had some of that quality, I'd say that it was the sound of breeding.

"Nor do you, it seems. I am Ron Stoppable. My enemies call me 'the buffoon' or 'you?!'. You may call be Stoppable if you desire."

"You're well mannered for an American. I am Olivia Kult, of the Vasselheim-Kults. You may call me Mistress."

"Look, I'm on the clock here so can we just skip to the villain's rant please?"

"Maybe you aren't as well mannered as I thought," she said before launching into a diatribe that would have made Drakken on his best day blush with inadequacy. I settle in, glancing at my watch.

* * *

Author's Note: I cut this chapter short because I, a) didn't want to end up with the temptation of killing off a major character straight away and b) I didn't want to make it seem like a diatribe against Wicca, the theme of this villain. She's a parody of one of the characters from Living Saint, who is a Pretender, a false Paragon.

I want it on record that I have nothing against Wiccans as people, I have a problem, on an academic and gut reaction level, with the fake history of Wicca as a religion espoused by characters like Soraya. Western magic is a mishmash of techniques from half remembered pre-roman religions and middle eastern mysticism that has little or no record between certain dates, with the exception of Faustian and Illuminati sources. There was no great hidden church of Wicca in these times. Heck, Wicca's origins seem to stem almost entirely from the ingenious marketing of a Satanist and a guy who was excommunicated for being an Illuminati in 1921, combined with the fertile imaginations of the young, bored and rich of the time.

Not entirely important to the story but I want you to understand that I'm not picking on Wiccans. Ok? Good.


	45. Chapter 44

To this day, I'll never get the obsession some people have with Lotus blooms. Symbolically, I understand it but the flowers themselves look like the retarded cousin of a water lily. The only thing that makes them special is that you can find them in some truly intense shades.

I know academically that they have a significance in the cultures that mention them because they are used as a metaphor, simply because they grow like weeds throughout India, but it is in those metaphors that they take on their true beauty and in allowing the lotus of your heart to bloom and open to the emotions that you feel, you live so much more.

And feel betrayal so much more keenly.

* * *

Monty strikes out at me and I parry, though his moves are as strong and confident as when we began, while mine are growing sluggish. No, scratch that, Monkey Fist strikes out at me. Monty was the man I trusted and right now, it feels like that man is dead.

Within the confines of the temple, like on all holy ground, the forces of Sun Wukong within us obey an ancient agreement with Guayin to avoid killing. Now, denied our powers and transformations, we are forced to fight with our muscle and skill alone. I'm going to lose.

Monkey Fist has the obvious advantage on me here because he never stopped training his martial prowess while I was forced to concentrate on other areas. I'm not nearly as personally powerful as I was on that mountain plateau so long ago.

"I thought we were past this, Fiske!" I spit through layers of translucent venom, hanging from the edges of my mind.

"There can be only one and even if Immortal says that it can be me, I must have assurances!"

"I'm completely at a loss. Why the hell do you want to be the Mystical Monkey Master anyway? I've read the brochure and I'm not all that aware of anything worth having in the package."

"What?"

"Fiske, the mystical monkey thing is just history being doomed to repeat itself. You become Sun Wukong again and wait under a rock forever until some Bodhisattva comes along to claim you and send you off after a new Buddha's worth of scriptures."

"No, the Mystical Monkey Master will rule the world!"

"Where do you get this stuff? There's no precedent for that and if there was, you'd think that Arahat and Immortal, the two guys directly tied to the thing would be able to give us a heads up!"

"Lies!" he howls, slamming a fist into me and hurling himself backwards, disappearing down a narrow shaft in the floor. Why can't he make anything easy?

* * *

Down wending, winding tunnels I crawl, as swiftly as humanly possible, though I know that Monty is much swifter in such confined spaces than I could manage without the gifts of flight that I have become so accustomed to. Heck, in the real world, I've been using conventional methods so much that I sometimes forget that I have the whole mystical shebang. That's partially because doing all the fighting would have denied my allies any experience and partially because I had begun to lose much of my focus in the real world.

It's a hell of a lot easier to focus when the world around you is full of demons and ghouls and you have a fistful of very calm men at your back. Right now, it's not so simple. I've been cheated of my faith by a man that I thought of as my greatest equal in this world. Through shared suffering, we became akin to brothers. He was closer to me than Yamanuchi-Sensei or any of the masters or the Paragons and yet now he has thrown away that bond because he believes that I am doomed to betray him for the contents of this temple.

His mystical trinket has no real meaning to me but if he is to join the ranks of those who would depose Drakken only to seize control of the world themselves, then I fear I must destroy him to preserve the pure memory of the hero that Montgomery Fiske truly was over the last few years. There are two ways of doing that. I can kill him or I can trick him into becoming the Monkey Master, though I'll cross that bridge, yadda yadda.

Gripping the walls of the vertical tunnel with my out-turned palms, I swivel down into the corridor below. Despite this temple having a grave significance where Monkey Power is concerned, I openly doubt that there are many traps located herein. Something tells me that given the location, the nature of the fairly toxic vegetation in the surrounding area and the complex mystical wards on the building that there won't be many mechanical traps at least.

Well, I was wrong. A sextet of darts burst from the walls in rapid succession, heading in my vague direction. I dodge two, parry three and as I move to avoid the last, it catches the edge of my belt. As my pants descend to my ankles, I feel a strange rush of nostalgia, displaying my green spotted boxers to the world.

I smile, considering the fact that something in me prevented me from realising long ago that the cardboard like belts sold at Smartymart really aren't the best adventuring wear. A short section of rope provides a belt and a moment of relief. Wondering for a moment what Kim would have done, her being the one with the experience where trap filled temples are concerned, I begin to use my basic physical training to my advantage, tumbling fluidly through the corridor to my right. This is obviously the way Monty came; the dust is disturbed and there are arrows everywhere.

* * *

"Monty!" I howl with rage filling my lungs like water surging in a drowning man. The target of my attentions is huddled on the platform at the front of the temple, clutching at a small hunk of poorly hewn jade.

"You're too late, Stoppable!" he replies with something like his old madness creeping into his voice, "now the ghost legion is mine and I shall claim my place as the mystical monkey master!"

"I've told you about this before, Monty. I don't want the role and you're welcome to it but I swear that you don't seem to get what that actually means."

"It means that I shall be the ruler of all the world, under the calm wisdom of the Monkey essences!" he howls with the joy of a gang of Goldentails in a banana warehouse.

For one brief moment, I raise my hand to my face and let my head hang into it. This is so unbelievably pathetic. Maybe I should just let the treacherous bastard ascend to the role and let the gods seal him into or under something for his impudence. No, that isn't me. I am still Ron Stoppable, amateur hero and all around good egg.

"I'm not going to ask you to give me that thing because I want to be the Monkey master, or because you're my friend, or even because I want to help the rebellion. I simply don't trust you to wield that kind of power in your present state of mind. Give me the rock." Not the most poetic of ultimatums but it'll have to do.

"I will crush you with my monkey legion if I need to, old friend," his acid reply cuts back at me. I feel strangely unclean as he calls me 'friend'.

"Monty, Monty, Monty," I echo in the most condescending voice I can, "this is a temple, dude. Thanks to the deal between Guayin and Sun, none of that mystical monkey crap is going to work here. It's just you, me and a whole lot of spank monkey I've got in this bag here."

"Bag?"

"Well, more a holster," I say as I haul a neural stunner from my thigh holster and shoot him repeatedly. As he clatters to the ground, I know from the smell that my clarity is returning and I'm finally allowing the emotions of the moment to wash over me. I shudder a moment at their intensity and keeping my blaster trained on Monty, I retrieve the little hunk of jade from his hand and begin to make my exit. I know he won't be down for long but I want to try to get to the surface and away from the temple before he realises what's happened.

* * *

"I want that amulet, Boy!"

The grating tones of my hunter echoes through the trees, shaking vines and making the leaves dance slightly. We're both far enough away from the temple that we can tap into the energies of the Monkey Power. I've partially shifted into a semi-coherent form in order to try to make myself more difficult to spot. Tapping the full limits of the power is going to be nigh impossible until I can get my mind straight and think of him either as the madman that he is now or the friend he once was. At the moment, I'm not sure if he's both or neither.

The shard of jade in my hand is cutting slightly, the force with which I've been grasping it. I can't get the damn thing working, though I'm not sure if it's because I'm not completely open or because of some other factor. Phantom monkeys my shiny blonde ass hair!

I can think of only one option that I can use without being centred fully and I really don't want to consider what will happen if I take that course of action. Beggars, however, cannot be choosers.

Shuddering briefly, I shake free a very specific hair that has been the bane of my existence for a long while. At least it didn't get Joss pregnant.

* * *

Freedom, sweet horrible freedom. Now, where was I?

Shifting into a nice neat shield of invisibility, I move towards the treacherous bastard, drawing a knife from my belt. If only my duplicate had felt it useful enough to give me that damn amulet, I could have resolved this whole thing in minutes. Right now, I'm going up against a foe that if he were sane would be a match for me. As it is, I think we'll have a lot of fun together.

Bounding upside down on the underside of the canopy is far easier than trying to wade through the thick sub-tropical undergrowth. Man I wish Kim was here. Then I could let her do all the work and admire her ass while she was at it. Good things always come to an end, and it's not as if I got the chance to do that much when she was actually alive. It was a damn nice ass for a skinny chick though.

Head in the game Stoppable. I'm sure that I can slip away from the herd and have some fun with Bonnie or Joss once this is over. Just got to make sure that I don't visit any of my baby-mommas. That could be awkward. I think I'll owe myself a little fun once this is over, yes.

He's bounding through the trees, lots of him. Hmmm. I could really use some backup. Still, this could be fun as long as I don't stay in one place too long and don't get seen.

* * *

I sit in the brush, hoping that the thoughts going through my head, the rage and the lust, don't infect me or corrupt me in some way. Sad as it is, they couldn't anyway, they're all my thoughts.

Screams from Monty, or more accurate, Monties begin to reach my ears. It's painful to listen to, almost as difficult as feeling the little thrills as each one of them dies at my hands.

This could be a long, horrible night.

* * *

As I fall upwards into the crotch of another of them and use my blade to open the artery just below the surface of its groin, I feel like a hand is being laid on my shoulder. I'm enjoying myself so much that I just ignore the pussy part of me and continue in my wonderful, bloody work.

I know that I'm not really making kills, only damaging them to the point where they break up into smoke and recombine as hairs on the big bald monkey man. How I hate him right now. I pull around a tree and catch sight of the primary Monty.

I know it's him because he's sat cross legged, a stiff look of concentration on his face. Only the primary has to worry about holding his mind together as all the fragments do their work, the real me had to do this once while we held up a great cathedral that was threatening to fall. Knowing that the knife will end this, which isn't really my intention, I drive a foot hard into his belly, slamming him back into the brush. He screams in utter fear, very briefly as a thousand copies of him instantly express their opinions on his goals at once, overwhelming his mind. For a very brief moment I consider taking some of his fingers or violating him, just to express my displeasure but I feel my body coming apart on a spiritual level so I settle for just getting a swift kick in.

* * *

An uncountable number of Monty clones sit, lie or stand around me as I walk through the body of them. Some are fighting over differences of perspective and others have lapsed into the insanity that they were composed of.

Monty, as I've realised I still think of him, is sitting before me and I can't help but wonder what will become of him. The bindings that keep his duplicates intact will collapse soon but that isn't much of an issue. His mind is in too many places and it will stay shattered like this until his thoughts have settled.

Right now, I am wracked with pity but I can't bring myself to trust him enough to take him in and help him, fearing for the lives of those I care for and my children.

As for me, the darkest part of me has saved me once again and I feel irreparably dirty.

I leave Monty to his fate in the jungles of Cambodia, knowing that he will be ok but not sure if I hope that will be true or not.


	46. Chapter 45

Love is a funny thing. They say that it makes the world go round and quite frankly, after dealing with Arahat, I'm starting to think that maybe it does. At the very least, he can use love to stop bullets and still blades. Right now, I'm starting to agree that it has a great deal of power, enough to heal old wounds.

It's strange what can provoke this most mysterious of emotions. During the 'greying,' as it has become known, things took a darkening turn for those in the British Isles but with the help of the Paragons and the general spirit of the inhabitants, the ruins of a nation have become a wonderful place for people to live, in a way that's free. Right now, I'm watching a six year old and a five year old playing in the puddles in what used to be a roadway. I'm in love.

The elder boy helps the little girl skip over the shallower part of the puddle and then gets pushed over into the deeper part of it with a laugh and a smile from the lips of the shiny little girl. I haven't seen that much joy in one place since Yori locked eyes on me in Tokyo or when I first kissed Bonnie. Or when I returned from Wannaweep. I feel my face twist into an involuntary smile as I think of the fact that one of those examples was from the mother of the boy and one of the others was from the girl's older sister.

* * *

"Love is a strange thing, isn't it Ronald?" asks a distinctly Jewish voice from behind me as I sit and watch the children still playing. We've been here for hours and now they're playing with an old man and a teenaged girl. The old man brought a large, narrow hoop of iron with him and a long narrow stick. I've never seen anything like it, but right now, the teenager is piggybacking the girl up and down the road in giggling pursuit of the boy and the old man who are driving the ring along the road with the stick. I have to say that I think it looks like great fun, an opinion that the quintet of mole-rats sat on my lap and shoulders seem to concur with. 

"You could say that, Rabbi," I reply without looking up.

"You really have a way for recognising people, don't you Ronald?"

"Gerry, just how many New York Jews do you think we brought with us to what's left of London? Really?"

"I guess you're right. Where are these Paragon things you were talking about? I'm guessing that I should be talking to this Prophet girl," he said quietly in a way that say that he both has no real intention of talking to her and a belief that she'd actually have the time of day for him. Not a particularly forgiving girl if you're a practicing Jew, that Prophet.

"She's in a place called Swindon and to listen to Immortal talk about it, the place is some kind of grey purgatory," I smile, knowing that Hsien never did have much of a habit of mincing his words.

"Oh well, I'll talk to her when she comes back then," he pauses, "you know that there's nothing to stop you going and playing with them you know Ronald. They both know who their daddy really is, even if they have another father wherever they spend their time."

I turn to look at the bearded man for the first time since we started talking. He looks more or less how he did when I was in high school, unchanging in that strange way that Jewish men often are. That said, who's going to notice a few new wrinkles amongst all that facial hair?

"How are you doing with the plastic lenses?" I ask, trying to change the subject.

"I look like Woody Allen and you know it. Now back to the subject at hand. You know that those rats want to play with the children and the only thing keeping them from doing so is the emotions they can feel radiating out of you like a cheap lightshow."

"What do you mean?"

"You have no idea what I'm talking about? Really Ronald, I can feel the waves of energy that wash off you and I'm about as open as the Hoover dam."

"Rabbi, you're a hell of a lot more open that you think."

"Fair enough, Ronald, but I'm still not anywhere near the levels that you or that Monkey fellow are at and I can hear you thinking a mile off. What's going on in there, Ronald? It's like listening to a dozen concerts at once."

"I'm feeling guilty that little Jade isn't here and having fun with her siblings and I have no idea why. It's not as if I really had anything to do with her in the four years since she was born, nor have I ever seen her. That said, out of those two down there, I've only ever met Ryu-chan and I thought that he was Hirotaka's son. Not that we didn't get on well."

"You got on well with your own child? Heaven forbid."

"Gotta love that crazy Yiddish humour. Not as if you can give me lectures about this, oh father of Sabrina."

"Low."

"Yeah, well, you started it. Anyway, yeah, I played with Ryu and we had some good fun, though he has a damn mean right on him. Punched me right here," I say, grinning nearly uncontrollably as I show the Rabbi a patch of unblemished skin on my upper arm.

"Like his mommy and his daddy."

"Like his mommy, his daddy and Hirotaka to boot."

"So what's keeping you from going to play?"

"Not entirely sure. Maybe I'm troubled by the fact that both their mothers loved me enough to keep them but were afraid enough to hide them."

"Big headed there Ronald. They love their children and there's no secret that Anne has her own issues. You really think their decision to keep those children really has anything to do with you?"

"I don't know, really I don't," I reply eventually, shaking my head. I'm guessing there was some subtle change in my attitude because all five of the rats have gone skittering off to play with my children.

* * *

There are a lot of clouds in this country, I'll give them that. They must have a dozen different words for rain and there are more than a hundred variations by region. Hell, they have more concepts connected to weather than any people I've ever met and having lived in China with their obsession with carefully codifying every little thing, that's saying something. 

Right now I'm rolling and frolicking through what is apparently called clemn weather. It's a tight kind of hanging weather with fine drizzle that fills the air whenever it gets the chance. The downside to dancing through the thin, wispy layers of cloud is that I can't see the wonders of the highland scenery beneath me.

In a brief moment of indulgence, I sweep beneath the clouds and cut through a nice narrow valley, locked with heather and darkened with bleak shadow. I return through the clouds, grinning and smiling, despite being soaked to the skin and technically as cold as ice. Not that I care in the least.

Wandering along the clouds to my left is a bulky black man with a serene look and a shiny bald head that looks like it could be used as a mirror by some oddly shaped holder of vanity.

"You're loving this island aren't you?" he asks happily.

"How could I not?" I ask, feeling a feeling that I really haven't felt since Kim died. Alive. Free. Filled with spirit and wildness, I am alive.

"It's a horrible, dreary place with little going for it. Now technology doesn't work, by your hand. How is it good?"

"Hahahahaha," I laugh freely and happily, without humour or malice, with nothing but bubbling joy in my veins, "I came to this country a man with nothing more than an angry common-law wife and a collection of scars. Every one of these vicious little raindrops washes away a little bit of that hurt. I'm happy to be with Bonnie and I don't feel like I need to be with her to protect her anymore. She seems stronger and I feel it as a result."

I drop through the clouds again and then shoot back up through the thick banks like a rocket, pulling a neat little contrail behind me. Laughing lightly, I begin sculpting faces into the clouds with my mind and its powers. The face of a laughing child with her mother's eyes begins to take form and I'm not even surprised by the image that my mind has decided needs cutting.

"I have a family now, Ross. For the first time in years, I have a family. It's nothing like what I'd ever thought it would be, hell, I can scarcely bring myself to talk to them, to play with my own children but I have a family," I laugh again, almost unable to control my singing heart, "I have a family!"

"You know, you're talking about love and feelings and you're not even thinking about Kim. Correction, she just isn't corrupting any of your thoughts with longing. What's changed?" he asks with uncharacteristic interest.

"I think this land had an effect on me while I was questing with Dreamer. What other place on earth has what amounts to a religion strong enough to have a Paragon based solely around being who you are and damn proud of it?"

"The spirit Britiannic is a unique thing, yes. There is not another nation on earth that has had the unchanging faith in itself to maintain a creed for the thousand years that it takes to truly earn a Paragon. No matter who invades them, they're still British and damn proud of it. Even the Scots and the Welsh, though they wouldn't willingly admit it. The marching of Drake's Drum would seem to say that they've had a Paragon for a long, long time."

"I wasn't really thinking of that. It's more the way that the Dreaming flows around this little island, growing and swelling with its weird energies. Kim and I rarely came here and we never had to deal with any of the weirdness or the demons. There's no other rock on this planet with anywhere near this many lay-lines and nexuses of power. I can feel it throbbing beneath the surface. What's a faint hum in the States is a wild screaming here. There's no wonder that the paladins complain about this place so much."

He smiles at me with a look of pity.

"You've spent time with the paladins?"

"Oh hell yes! Good little Catholic boys they are not! Man can those bastards drink."

"Most of them are Irish, but they've always been humourless with Hsien and I."

"Can't imagine why."

"Don't grin at me like a slut young man," he grins back at me.

* * *

"Why did you do that?" she demands as I throw caution to the wind and snap her sports bra once again. "Hey, quit it, Ron!" 

"OK," I say smiling, before just doing it again.

"Ron, stop it now or you'll be sleeping alone tonight!"

Frowning into a mock pout, I sit back into my chair and wink past her as she returns to looking at a half drained pint of what apparently passes locally as beer. I'll never get the hang of it. In the south, most of it tasted rather like soap and now in the north, most of it tastes like something like vinegary porridge. I'm used to the malt beers of the American continent, liquid that Immortal expertly informs me is not beer.

I take another sip of the liquid which I have come to appreciate in the last couple of days. My sense of peace has been bringing my ability to appreciate the moment back to the fore.

Rufus continues his nimble climb up the leather back of the chair on his little black claws and reaches out, grinning conspiratorially behind his buck teeth. I can't help but grin as I hear a brief snap noise and a sharp cry of surprise.

"Hey, no magic!" Bonnie cries at be as she stands up from her chair.

"No magic," I reply, nodding at the grinning mole rat that's hanging from the strings on the back of her vest.

"Oh god, Ron, you know how I feel about these things!" she cries trying to get Rufus to let go.

"That they're like smaller, walking versions of my penis with slightly bigger teeth?"

"Ron, mum says you should stop gloating and come give her some sugar," demands a small but insistent little voice from behind me. Looking around, a small girl with tightly braided nappy hair, broad features and a wonderful beige coffee complexion smiles brightly at me with the same mischief that her mother had in her eyes the first time she kissed me.

"Well then chocolate bear, you're just going to have to run an errand for me," I announce happily, leaning down and giving the little beauty a peck on the lips, "go give that to your mother."

I smile as she runs back to Monique, giggling happily as I turn back to Bonnie who's desperately trying to get Rufus to let go. I knew I made a wise choice in naming that one.

"Rufus, here," I say once the joke has run its course and stand up to take Bonnie in my arms and stop her panicking. "It's ok, babe, he's off."

"I don't know how you can stand those things," she mutters back, slipping her head into the nook of my neck.

"The kids or the rats?" I ask idly.

"Both."

* * *

Sunsets are nice wherever you are but it has to be said that the one weakness of our host's land is that the sunsets are notably unspectacular. Not that you get to see them much with all the clouds and miserable weather blowing around. 

Sitting now amongst friends, beside a nice pit fire, that really doesn't matter. Shella, Monique's brat is playing patticake happily with Lynn and Ryu is sat with Hirotaka and Arahat, talking a little and enjoying some kind of sausage wrapped in oats concoction that one of the locals provided for us. I'm sitting with Bonnie leaned against my left side, head on my tummy, wrapped up in my arm and Anne to my right, head on my shoulder.

Realising that Bonnie is asleep, I nod to Rufus who disappears to gather a crew of the rats and find a blanket for her. Slowly, almost to the point where I don't notice it, Anne begins slipping her hand into mine and I scarcely notice until she begins to squeeze. Turning my head slowly, I catch a brilliant gust of those blue eyes, shining up at me in the dark with a gentle, sad little smile at their base.

"You love her, don't you?" she asks, with what sounds like hope in her voice.

"You mean Lynn?" I ask in reply.

"Yes."

"Very much."

"You still haven't played with her yet."

"How am I supposed to do that Doc? Walk up to her and say, 'hi, I'm you're daddy, rock, paper, scissors best of three'?"

"She does know who her father is you know."

"She knows that I'm her father?"

"Not in so many words. She knows that her father is a beautiful blonde man with dark eyes and freckles who leads special people who fights so that she's free to be happy like she is and hopefully everyone will be one day too."

"She knows my name?"

"Of course. In the same way that Ryu knows that Stoppable-San is his real rather. Neither of them really knows who that is," she smiles sadly in a way that screams _Ronnie, I need a hug_, just like Kim used to, "it's like how Shella thinks you're her father."

"She what?"

"Don't look so surprised. We all know that she really has no idea who's the twins are, she just made sure that Steven took good care of Natalie and chose a good role-model for Shella. It isn't as if you don't love her more than her real father would so don't be surprised by it."

"So for what do I owe the pleasure of the light show from your baby blues?" I ask finally as the squad of rats return carrying the blanket and carefully drape it over Bonnie.

"This is one of the first times I've been able to think clearly in years, Ron. I know that Kim is at peace and I'm not being haunted by her at all. I think that you or this place had something to do with that. My daughter needs a father. The twins try but they don't have it in them. Too much like their father. I need you to be a father to little Lynn. I know you didn't want her and I had no right to keep her but…"

"Who says I didn't want her? I'd have liked to have known before she was four and without a crazy witch telling me over tea and torture. I just can't shake the horrible feeling that you thought I wouldn't want to meet my own daughter, that you thought I'd even consider forcing you to abort such a beautiful thing as a new life. new blood in my line," she tries to speak but I cut her off, "no, let me finish. The life we lead is not kind to children but frankly neither was growing up with my parents. I swear, for the first three years of my life, my father thought I was a hypoallergenic housecat," she laughs, "wrong-sick but probably true. You and James raised me for the most part and I am not going to be seen dead doing any less of a job than that self important shit."

The area around me has become quiet. The children are more unsettled by the cold disgust that has edged into my voice than my use of the expletive and all of my friends are thinking of James and his deeds.

"I'll be a father and more to Lynn and Ryu and Shella and any other child that is brought to me. One day, I hope, Jade will be playing happily with the others too. Her and every sprog that I can produce with miss wonderful here."

At this point, Bonnie rolls herself onto a more comfortable patch of my stomach and mutters, "not tonight, Ronnie, we're in England," to wild laughter.

* * *

Author's Note: Weird change of pace, no? I'm not going to make it obvious where this occurs in the timeline just yet but the observant amongst you will realise roughly where it goes. 


	47. Chapter 46

"Hello Raymond."

The big boxy mechanoid stands over me as if I should be afraid of what I'm seeing. The piece of crap is scarcely up to the grade of a Diablo robot and actually has weak point in it's construction. The bulky, clunky elbowless arm swivels down to point the disintegrator cannon straight at my face. I can't help but smile.

"You aren't the real Raymond Beam. You have no soul. No Hsien. You're just Poh. Lets see if we can't do something about that."

From my sitting lotus on the ground, I open up every chahkra I have, letting raw power flood into my body and ooze out of every pore on my body. I let it emanate from me and boil over the surrounding area. So much chi. I'm so alive right now it isn't funny. The sad thing is that it's all misplaced emotion.

"Do you know what an entity without any Hsien souls is in classical Chinese thought, Ray? It's a ghost. And the thing about ghosts is that they're bound by certain codes of conduct to avoid them making life too difficult for the living."

"What is this to me?" demands the angry voice of Raymond Beam from the armoured suit.

"Well, you see, your clones are Poh beings. And I've just informed the local celestial court that they're not obeying the rules. Congratulations. You've just had a status change to haunting entities."

"I'll crush you Stoppable!" declares the clone as he proceeds to stomp straight past me and into a wall. Grinning, having stepped aside to let him past, I'm on the verge of genuine laughter.

"You really don't get it do you? Your clones can't help you any more because they can't turn corners and dissipate when they touch walls. And you know what's really the kicker Raymond, me old mucker? I'm still armed and angry!"

With that, I vault onto the back of the lead mechanoid, dragging the hatch open with pure muscular force and then dragged the clone pilot free. I dump him onto the floor and after a few moments making clear what each of the neatly labelled controls does, I turn the machine, pick up the Ray clone and then proceed to make for the tunnel.

Suffice to say that beating your way through a mile long tunnel filled with confused clone piloted mechanoids is messy. It gets even more so when your weapon of choice is the unconscious and subsequently very dead body of another clone. It always impresses me how strong human thigh bones are.

* * *

I know pseudohistorically I'm not meant to be here but I really don't care. This isn't about what he's done to Kim, nor about what he's planning to try to do. This isn't about drowning me. This isn't even about slurring my good name. Ray Beam is going to regret ever being born because he is a bad person and while I'm duty bound to respect people's right to be who they are, I'm not required to stand by and do nothing while they harm others.

I may not be able to judge him on my moral level but I'm sure I can judge him and find him guilty with his own.

This room is the size of a fistful of football pitches stitched together, filled with milling and confused mechanoids that keep slamming into each other and falling over, on top of each other. Grinning like an idiot, I start firing rapidly through the mess, touching off every plasma torch fuel pack that I can find. In moments, the room's air is all but consumed and still I don't care.

* * *

File extracted from the Apollyon Mark II neural mainframe unit after termination. Data has been passed to Researcher Stevens for analysis. All details of the Stoppable analysis project are to be considered Alpha-one secret. Eyes only.+++++

-Location: Ray Beam base, simulation A14

Base time index: 09/07/10 – 0431hrs

00:00:03 – Maintenance Ray 14 notices sounds of combat.

Subject Stoppable has successfully disabled 6 units of the basic Deathray configuration, mostly through means unknown. Each of the Ray clones piloting them reported that they were rendered blind from a spray of dark liquid.

Based on protein traces found after the subsequent fire, this was presumed to be blood. Each unit had it's cockpit breached and was dragged clear before being impaled on something available. Each subsequent Ray attempted to fire upon him with disintegrators or kinetic blasters but all they succeeded in doing is boiling off plasma fuel tanks or terminating wounded clones.

00:00:37 – A critically damaged Deathray unit emerges from the service tunnel using its flight system. Signs of a controlled overheat of the plasma thermo-couples, a standard tactic of the rebellion are visible in the melting and smoking vents around the unit's midsection.

00:00:41 – The damaged Deathray tumbles into one of the preparation areas, impacting with and igniting the plasma systems of several uncompleted Deathray units. The resultant explosion raises temperature within the hanger space to over 900 degrees and destroys 14 Deathrays in various stages of construction. The temperature spike causes the death of the majority of the unshielded Ray clones in the hanger over the next 51 seconds.

00:01:01 – A stream of tiny metallic motes begins flowing out of the tunnel mouth. Based on the observations of the numerous Deathray pilots prior to their deaths shows that these motes resemble four pointed caltrops with points made from chew-bits, similar to those used in the construction of tunnels. The complexity of this nano-technology is well beyond the base technology level of the simulation.

00:01:06 – The first of the Deathray units within close reach of the tunnel encounters one of the nano-cutter devices. His life support seal was breached within 1.93 seconds. The resultant temperature rise and drop in atmospheric oxygen content causes him to expire in a further 6 seconds.

00:01:21 – The last of the frontline Deathray units is terminated by the projectiles. As all other monitoring systems in the region were disabled by the heat, we lose contact until subject Stoppable emerges into the deployment hanger.

00:04:52 – Stoppable overwhelms the inner blast doors of the deployment hanger using means unknown. The materials demonstrate cracking consistent with exposure to ultrasonic vibrations in patterns designed to encourage positive feedback. Numerous maintenance clones are killed in the shower of metal splinters.

00:04:54 – Stoppable returns to visibility as the cloud of shards settle. Deathray units designated as DR32, DR81 and DR90 move to intercept.

00:05:08 – There is an unknown circumstance in the recordings of the engagement from this point on. Somehow, DR81's perceptions of the combat become distorted, replacing the locations of DR32 and Stoppable. This process is indeterminate, though the time index where the emotions found within its portion of the hivemind is used as the reference point of the combat.

00:05:15 – DR32 begins to fire on Stoppable while DR90 closes the ground in an attempt to bring to bear a fusion torch. The weapon cuts cleanly through the air above Stoppable as he ducks and the kinetic blaster shot misses as he twists to the left. The explosion temporarily distracts DR90.

00:05:24 – Stoppable's fist smashes into the chest of DR90's mechanoid. The force rips the suit off the ground, depositing it on its back. While the force is within the parameters of the equipment's provided by the scenario, though no contact with the Wade characterisation was detected at the time of the impact. It is thus suspected that this is a function of the abilities of the subject himself.

00:05:47 – The words, or more accurately concepts, "Sin" and "Clone" begin to reverberate through the neural sections dedicated to DR81's individuality. Its anger is raised greatly by this, both because of Ray Beam's powerful dislike of Stoppable and the natural instability of Ray Beam's personality. It turns both the disintegrator and kinetic blaster on what it perceives as Stoppable and opens fire.

00:05:49 – DR32's suit is destroyed by the initial volley of fire from DR81. Stoppable turns to DR81 and makes a cutting gesture that has become a common sight amongst those who analyse his combat actions. As usual, we gain little extra information on the attack form used in this way and DR 81 falls into fragments.

00:09:34 – Stoppable closes the ground with the now desperate Ray Beam having destroyed more than three dozen Deathray units and a number of maintenance clones. The internal temperatures of the priming area increases to more than seven hundred degrees. Beam is attempting to get the as yet incomplete Heavy Deathray unit primed.

00:09:54 – Stoppable speaks for the first time in the engagement, apparently unconcerned by the temperatures in the area.

Stoppable: Raymond! I'm here for you!

00:10:21 – Beam successfully activates the targeting systems of the Heavy Deathray and begins firing on Stoppable. Each time he fires, Stoppable appears to 'flicker' out of the way. We have been unable to quantify the movement because he seems to move aside and return to his original position in times that directly compare to the duration of the beam.

00:11:13 – Internal temperatures in the holding area reach somewhere around one thousand degrees. Stoppable utilises a tactic common to the Stoppable found in this projection, hurling a battleaxe formed from the Lotus blade at the Deathray. The blade's impact, however, is uncommon for the Stoppable of this projection, impacting with a force of more than four hundred TeraNewtons per square centimetre, akin to the gravitic effects of a star. The suit is breached by this single attack.

00:11:41 – Beam is terminated by the hostile conditions, succumbing to the extreme temperature in less than six seconds. His flesh burns from his bones as Stoppable pulls him free of the wreckage.

00:13:28 – Stoppable stands staring into the eyes of Beam's skull for around 8 minutes before abandoning it and returning through the tunnel to Possible.

There is little additional information to be drawn from this file. No new abilities were demonstrated that could not be explained by the additions that the scenario generation added to the subject. This test has proven wholly inconclusive on a tactical level, though it seems that Stoppable is going to extreme lengths to preserve his 'life' here for the sake of the Stoppable of this projection. This nobility could possibly be exploited at a later date.+++++

* * *

My final battle of this world is titanic and wholly lacking in later consequence. I'll leave the details to your imaginings but it concluded with me stood atop a ruined mech in an airless void of plasma, holding the scorched skull of what was once known as Raymond Beam, an entity that I took the time during the fight to rip the truth from his mind. He was a sociopath that had been vigorously reprogrammed to desire to dominate Kim Possible because she's the most spirited woman on earth. He lived for the challenge but truly believe that everything he did was for her benefit. I showed him visions of the truth, dragging his mind kicking and screaming into the Dreaming as his flesh burnt from his bones in the impossible temperatures.

* * *

"Welcome to the absolute layer of reality, Raymond."

The hansom man's dark eyes and sandy highlights seem to shimmer slightly in the light of, what is to him, the astral plane or possibly heaven itself. Reality here is absolute but completely mutable. The paradox seems to be destroying his mind as his constant, busy thoughts, bound as they are to his sense of mortal time cause everything around use to shift at a bewildering rate.

"I've done something similar to this once before Raymond. I've already destroyed you body entirely and now your soul is under my protection in what is known as the Dreaming. I am readily considering setting you adrift here so that your inability to control your mind will bring this place to rip you shreds. I am going to give you one chance to learn to preserve your own life. Answer me honestly and without trying to distort the facts as you perceive them honestly."

His eyes grow wide for a second as his mind begins to disintegrate under the pressure of the unique experience.

"Did you say that my body is gone?"

"That is what I said yes. Now, answer me: Do you love Kimberly Anne Possible?"

He freezes, silent in thought as the world around us shifts into a crazed montage of Kim and her wonderful beauty. A thousand deep, sea green eyes shining with happiness and something else. Need.

"Yes, I love her," he said finally, as if in pain.

"Really, Raymond?"

The entire montage begins howling out a thousand different ways of saying "Liar"

"Maybe I wasn't making myself clear, Raymond. You need to tell the truth to me or your mind is going to destroy you."

"I am telling the truth. I love her. She needs to be protected from herself. Her independence and self-importance is dangerous. She needs to be protected by me."

"You truly think that is love?"

"Yes, of course!"

"No wonder your deeper instincts are trying to get in here," I say quietly as I leave him in the midst of his imaginings as an almost infinite number of Kim spirits and Nymphs surge in to consume his, for want of a better word for that heap of filth, soul.

* * *

Author's Note: This is what I really wished Ron would do to Ray when I originally read Reunion. The original is cool but this one is so much more brutal. 


	48. Chapter 47

Having an arm ripped out of its socket is never going to be a nice experience. Having it happen to you, then unhappen to you, then witnessing it happen to eleven people simultaneously, well, that's in a league of its own. Somewhere between blaming yourself for the death of your first love for eight years and finding out that you actually have three children by different women and everyone else seems to know but you.

The shameful thing about this is that I'm not entirely troubled by the suffering of these people at this moment, given that each one of them has lied to me for a minimum of two years.

What's really troubling me right now is that I didn't know this was so. Given the fact that I've walked the twisting paths of the Dreaming enough, I should have seen at least the emotions that my capture and these truths bring. Not a trace of this suffering.

All I know about this year is that it was supposed to be a time of great joy.

Or was it?

Maybe I'm confusing times again.

Trying to predict anything from the Dreaming is impossible because time has no meaning there. I really should get used to that fact.

* * *

Pain.

Unending waves of pain.

As each of these wonderful, sea-foam crusted peaks of agony breaks on the beach that is my self, I fell an enormous sense of release. Hardly surprising really, but still one of the most potent joys I've ever experienced.

Silver linings. Got to love 'em.

Well, I do anyway. Turns out that the gimp is some kind of supernatural and he just found a small subcutaneous pocket with a silver pressed talisman wafer sealed into it. Kept the damn thing there to prevent vampires trying to bite my neck. Hopping or otherwise.

I pull my head up to look at him as he convulses on the floor, frothing at the mouth. Not sure what he is, maybe some kind of demon. It isn't really like I have any options right now. I can't sense anything other than the poor bastards strapped to the crosses outside my bindings and I can't use any magic to get out. On top of that, I'm bound securely enough that even dislocating all of the bones in my arm wouldn't allow me to get a hand free. More training than I can access most of the time and I'm reduced to this.

Actually, there is one possibility.

Looking over at the little chanting figure to my right, I make myself heard.

"Hey, Sparky! Oi, listen to me you little post possession freak! I don't know what the hell that thing is but I'm pretty sure your mistress will punish you for mixing its suffering in with mine. I'm guessing you're just shifting all the agony from in here to out there so I suggest you knock it off and move him!"

The little retch stops chanting after a moment, the haze induced by constant abuse and twisted treatments lifting slightly at the chance to avoid more of the same. It regards me, I assume, for some time and then moves over to the fallen form of the gimp. Being at most half its size and a quarter of the big brute's weight, its attempts to move it are notably unsuccessful.

"You could free one of them to make them help you. I'm not suggesting that you'd be foolish enough to free me but I'm sure you can keep control of one of them. The girl with the dreadlocks and the cocoa complexion still has working arms and legs. Yes, that's it, pick up the scalpel so that you can keep her in check. Yes, that's right, be careful not to break any of the lines in the bindings."

The little freak, still without talking frees Bonnie's left hand and then starts waving the scalpel at her. Unlike what I've come to expect from her, she seems actually spooked by this.

"It's alright beautiful, if you do what he says he won't cut you!" I call out by way of encouragement, "Just come over here and drag the big thing out of the circle. He isn't bleeding so he won't break any of the lines."

There's the briefest of smiles, cast from the bedrock of her face as something clicks in her mind. Maybe I'm being to obvious for her devious streak to pick up on. No, she's twisted her ankle so that its begun bleeding again. Perfect.

That girl is wonderful isn't she, I smile to myself as I watch her stumble and trip with the weight of the gimp, landing each time in a place that's carefully calculated to break one of the lines. The little guy is too focused on making sure that the gimp doesn't break any of the bindings to notice the staggered breaks she's leaving in the diagram.

As she finally breaks the last of the lines, I feel energy surge back into balance, rather like I've been trapped in a giant soap bubble, watching the world shift through the scintillating patterns of the soap residue. The little thing feels it too and has the briefest of seconds to panic as my anger takes physical form, separating from my body as a single hair and becoming a copy of me, perfect in every way.

"Hello, Bon-Bon," it says coldly as it marches across the room and seizes the wrist of the little thing, "maybe once I'm done here, Ronnie'll let me play with your fanny again!"

"That was you?!" she demands, looking over at me in horror as the passion-me drags the poor little bastard off to its demise.

"I thought that it was best not to tell you. We both enjoyed it and there was no shame in it. Didn't realise what was happening until I couldn't find you," I reply weakly.

"We are going to have to set some new boundaries, mister!" she grumbles as she uses a bonesaw to cut through the shackle on my right hand.

"Maybe we are. I always assumed I'd be able to control him. Don't bother with that, knock over that jar of bloody iron filings. That's it. Lotus in the house!"

As the jar clatters to the floor and leaves the complex patterns of bindings around it, I feel the lotus blade shift back in to the edges of my thoughts. It's almost as if it resents me for letting it get separated from me. Maybe there's an imprint of Sun on the thing too.

A quartet of atomically sharp shard blades should do it.

As the metal of my restraints is scythed through, I feel the horrible echoes of the other me doing unspeakable things to the little creature. At least he isn't raping it this time, I shrug.

Splitting off another duplicate, I let it take command. It aught to, it's fostered from the part of me that used to emulate Kim.

"Bonnie, I'm going to help you get the rest of these guys free and we're going to get them to the surface. I'm going to bring half of the lotus so we don't have to worry about how to move the ones who can't walk. Stay with me beautiful, I need you, ok?"

Bonnie nods numbly and I watch them go about their work. As for myself and Passion, well, we're going to have to play a housecall to the youngest scion of the Kult family.

* * *

Author's Note: Yung called it owning your shadow. In this case the shadow owns everybody else. 


	49. Chapter 48

Du sees my eyes before anything else. He jumps in surprise at the sight of two white orbs staring out at him from the darkness of the poorly lit warehouse.

"Who are you? What is this about," his cool, arrogant voice cuts through the air and makes my blood run just that little bit colder. It's horrible to realise that I've gotten so much control back in the last couple of days. I've not been holding my anger in, I've just been saving it and anger can be very much a focusing influence on the mind.

Closing my eyes, I warp his perceptions a little, effectively warping reality. I step out of a dark clump of shadows behind where he searches for the owner of the pair of eyes that had shone out at him moments before.

"I think you know the answer to that, William. Now, report!" I snap, having distorted my voice to match that of Eric, my old tormentor. Somehow, I knew instinctively that would do the trick.

"Why did you call me here? This is not the designated meeting spot and I'm not due to deal with you directly until I've done enough that replacement of Rockwaller would go unnoticed."

"It seems that you're not doing your job correctly, William," I mutter coldly, "Stoppable suspects you greatly and I doubt that you have the power to stop him."

"My series is rated to be able to deal with him. If the program had done its job, I would have been cycled out for upgrades by now. Unfortunately, we were not given control of the project so of course, nothing new was learned."

"You have a great deal of faith in your abilities, William. Anyone who actually saw your series in action would think that it was misplaced."

"Did you call me here to belittle me?"

"Not entirely, but you're so irkable that you're almost as much fun as the loser."

"Well what is it then? I'm supposed to be spending my time constructively, not wandering around in broad daylight, even if the riders don't bother me."

"Why haven't the rebels begun to question that, I wonder?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Du responds with a snort, self import dripping from his every pore, "those who do find themselves occupied elsewhere or in very dangerous terrain. The rest get taught the dangers of getting paranoid, it distracts from the situation."

For a moment, I feel an overwhelming urge to throw off the hood that casts my face into shadow and smash the damn thing's teeth in. Much as I dislike him, there's no way that the real Du, no matter how over confident he was, would have made anywhere near the number of mistakes that this one has. Plus, I contacted Yori a few days ago; Du's with them. They found him in a suspensor tube under Tokyo. They've opened him up to make sure that he's the real one too.

"I'm sure that your platitudes serve them well," I reply as sarcastically as I can, "now here's what dad wants you to do…"

I outline a simple and distinctly Drakken plan to Du and he listens, that plaster-cast face of his not changing for a second.

* * *

One of the ways that I made the insurgency stick together into a fully fledged rebellion in the first place was to take many of those who had been with us on the mountain in Tibet and distributed them through the cells. This might sound like I was going for hatchet-men but my real motivation was to provide a secure communications network. Not secure as in Wade's technology, solid but not impenetrable, but spiritual and thus impossible to attack unless Drakken somehow managed to clone faith.

Thankfully, I doubt he'll ever be intuitive enough to do that. Smart he may be, calm he is not.

I put out calls to see how far Du's influence goes. There are at least a dozen cells that have gone inoperative since I was captured. A number of cells refuse to acknowledge a central leadership because of bad decisions and most of the rest have been crippled by a new breed of synthetic that builds on the older Bebe cored units by adding the ability to produce genuine human scent, thus fooling the dogs. The worst thing is that a large number of the cells were sleeper cells so there's no way that they could have been traced with conventional means.

It's mildly insulting that most of those who were attacked assumed that I had cracked under torture rather than there being a traitor in their midst. I'm snapped out of my reverie by a deep, rumbling voice talking from my doorway.

"You know, when I took the time to infiltrate that thing, I assumed that you'd actually get around to making a difference. It's been what, three months since it happened? There was a time when you would've been all, "note. Serious. Face," by now."

"You're right, Wade," I reply, looking up to see him stood there looking diametrically opposed to the Wade that had rescued me not so long ago. His black trench coat and suit marks and insane contrast to the brilliant white cornrows that mark the shape of his domed head. "I've been meaning to ask; what happened to your hair?"

"Oh this? Had a little accident with one of Tim's experiments," he chuckles slightly but I can hear the weight of the world on his shoulders.

"So, do we have a plan?"

"Not really, Ron. Plans have been your part for a while now. What do we know?"

"Well…" I begin, hesitating while I put my mind in order, "this Du is a synthetic of some kind. He makes references to his series' superiority over the Eric series, which means he's more advanced than a type one. I'm going to make a leap and assume that he's one of those new Bebe models with the synthetic flesh and the pheromones, given that he doesn't upset the dogs anymore than the fact that they can smell how much of a douchebag he is. From his place of supreme leadership of the rebellion, he has sown discord and handed out the addresses of out cells to every synthetic and mailing list that he can so our numbers are somewhat reduced from what they were.

"He's pretty much succeeded in breaking Bonnie, something that three days in a tube of green liquid didn't achieve before, which could be one of out major weaknesses, it was the fact that people were so worried about earning her scorn in the early days that kept folks in line. Anyway, we have maybe six people that we can solidly rely on in this cell and I'm pretty sure I can get support from Steve, Larry, George, Brick and Duff when the time comes."

"Sounds like we have a mutiny," replied Wade with a dark look on his face.

"Yup, not a good example, really. Plus the moment we move on Du, we could find that half of the damn cell is made up of synthetics. I don't like those odds, Wade."

"Well, I can rig up a broad burst phase disruptor to at least shake them up a little but I'm not sure how much effect it'll have. From then on, we'll be relying on our skills and whatever you can bring to the table."

"Oh, how I wish it was that simple, Wade. I'm trying to get my mind straight but I just can't seem to. There are so many things that I don't know what to think about."

"From what they explained to me on the mountain and what you said in the Elseworlds, I don't really see what knowing has to do with it."

"Wade, you are a man of many talents and I'm impressed that listening is infact one of them. I think that's my problem at the moment. Strange that I can keep my head straight in the myriad changing situations I was thrust into, the dozens of Kims I met and fell for, yet I can't keep my mind straight when I finally get out and come back to you and Bonnie."

"Maybe you should go elsewhere for a while? Clear your head."

"Maybe. Or maybe I should go elsewhen."

"What?"

"Nevermind, but I'll need some time alone to do it. Can you see to that?"

"Ron, Du may call the shots, but I still tend the horses. There's nothing here that goes on without my say so. Or at least, very little," he grins sheepishly, trying to avoid mentioning the fact that he's had to reconfigure the observation systems to avoid catching sight of anything that he'd rather not. I can still remember the first time that happened to him.

Poor guy, no fifteen year old with mildly confused sexuality should have to witness his best friend doing the nasty with one of the male recruits. He and Jim haven't really spoken that much ever since.

* * *

I never thought, with all my years of marination practice that I would ever have trouble clearing my mind and sitting without thinking. It's a strange sensation when you realise that not thinking about anything is not the same as thinking of nothing. Right now, I've denied my mind any direction but it's still undirected chaos. Without direction, it will not find harmony and without harmony, I won't be able to achieve what I must.

The simplest of the Daoist focuses is on a flame. Conjuring one to mind, I let the form flicker and dance in the darkness that I have cleared in my thoughts, watching it take new forms and marvelling at the seeming of life that it has. Then again, life is Hsien and so is flame. Transient.

Exploring the rest of my mind slowly from the calm around the flame, I begin to watch the patterns come and go, forming tides and flows. Then I realise that I don't have to keep track of it. And I'm free.

* * *

Ice and snow are a rare thing in the dreaming, unless you know which places to look. It was one of the things that Hsien forced me to tread during my training and I know these places well now. Stepping a few paces through the snow, I find that the pack snow is thinner and thinner until the crunch changes timbre completely and I'm walking on the polished, clicking, hollow sounds of the boards of the stage at Middleton High School.

The smell is exactly as I remember and the sound is just like that given off by an untalented tap dancer in the talent show one year. I continue towards the footlights, enjoying the tones of my heels on the flooring. A faint tune begins to hum through my mind and the air.

Da-da-duum-dada-da-da

_I'm on it_

_I got it_

_I can do anything_

Teaching her to sing that song took so long. It's odd because the 'high notes' in that track weren't that impressive, certainly nothing compared to the soprano part of Silent Night. We tried it with the words redone into a lower key but she still stuffed it up every time we practiced, even when the 'high notes' were only as high as the normal notes in the other parts of the song.

_What you need_

_Got your back_

_Just say the word, I'm there_

Pretty words in retrospect and she honestly believed them.

I've been here before. Snow is part of the dreaming that connotes sorrow or loss; hence the loss of metaphorical heat from the surroundings. Looking back, the hall is no longer empty. Behind me is a huge crowd, populated with the whole Possible family, but as they are now rather than how they were then. Ann is sat there smiling, the twins are as sullen as ever with their hopeful little attempts at stubble, Jim with his boyfriend of the moment and on the end is James. The man appears how he does in my emotional opinion, grim and haggard, the man I once respected as a parent now lost in rage and misdirected hate, hate for both of us.

I'm not looking at this, however, what I've come here for is dancing the length of the stage, singing her heart out.

_When you find your world is caving in_

_And you bet you're gonna need a friend_

_Someone to take those fears away_

_Away _

_Away_

_Say the word_

"Take the time and I'll be there! Any time, any where, have you heard?" I sing out in a rich tenor that I doubt I could mimic in the real world.

She stops and looks at me.

"Ron, I know that you worked hard to hold them up but there's not need to ruin my bit!"

"Look around you, Kim, there's no-one here but us. I'm getting a private performance."

"Well," she says as she saunters towards me, hips swaying gently, her features filling from those of a sixteen year old friend to a twenty year old lover, "I guess that you're all the audience I'll ever need, Ron."

"I am what I is," I reply, allowing my face to distort until it's mostly teeth as her arms wrap around my shoulders and her weight takes it's place pressed against my hips.

"And that's all I ever want you to be, beautiful…" she mutters gently, her breath as sweet as a spring zephyr as her delicate little lips close with mine.

She finds herself kissing my hand.

"What I want to know, oh Nymph my love, is where I can find the true love she held for me. I need to feel that faith she had in me when I counted and I'm pretty sure you know where to find it."

"Why do you think I'd help you?" she demands petulantly, trying to pull away, yet I catch her and draw her back.

"Because a Nymph takes on the form that it thinks will be most pleasing to the host. As you've been imitating true love for me for so long, I'm guessing that it's wormed it's way into your subconscious." She turns her head to try and avoid listening further. "I've seen your tears as we're separated and you begin to plummet once again, that's not what was in the real Kim's eyes, but then, she never loved me like you do, did she?"

"Why do you torture me, Ron?" her teary, beautiful orbs lash back at me, sparkling with rage, "how can you love her more than me? I'm the perfect her for you!"

"Unfortunately, I think you're missing the point. We like people for their qualities and love them for their flaws. I loved her because she was so different, and I love you because you are too."

"You love me?" there is so much hope in that voice.

"As much as any man can truly love a dream. Right now, here, I can say that I might have loved you truly in another time or place. Please, I need to know where I can find a strong residue of her faith in me."

"You remember when you saved me from having my nose blown off? The moment that you settled me back and held me like a dancer? I've never felt so safe as I did in that moment. Part of me is a handful of dreams that she had after that day. You'll find her love there."

"Thank you. If I can find a way to give both you and another being like you a chance at being a whole being, would you take it and join with her?"

"What are you talking about?"

"I think I may have a way to put a ghost to rest. I'll tell you about it if I can make it happen. Thanks babe, I love ya," I announce, feeling more like I did when I was a mere boy that I have in years. As a parting gift, I leave behind my innocent self from my memories. He isn't real, but he'll keep her company for a while.

* * *

There is a faint, gossamer feeling to real love, the kind that comes from trust and caring, not the faint fixation that passion can bring or the arrogant, vain emotion that the belief that one cannot do better will create. It's like being touched gently by one you care about and who cares for you. The tingling goes after the faintest of moments, replaced with something that feels like you could build a fortress from it.

Love is not petty, love is not cruel, love is not giving away your last grain so that you have the strength to carry her. Love is quiet and yet if echoes through the heavens. It is not a hollow suggestion that one can feel love in the air and taste it in the water. I have known only one source of love like that and he was a kind a thoughtful man who loved me as he did himself; enough.

That is the feeling I taste in the air here in this moment.

Ned stands there having been the greasy little sidekick to my odd, greasy heroics and Kim's calm faith fills the air like spider webs in a movie cliché tunnel. That is love, whether either of us knew it or not. Not passion, not romance, not lust and not attraction, but in that moment, each knew that the other would succeed so that they could always be together.

I could stand here and write poetry and try to explain what true love is for the rest of my days but I simply bask in the feeling of knowing love and being love.

I'll never make a Buddhist, I have too much capacity to not love. I wouldn't make a model Christian, loving others as I love myself is hollow when I spend time after every failure wondering why I deserved to live. I can, however, recall Hosea; "and lo, the Israelites did sow the wind and now they will reap the storm."

Seems silly, but the huggy Christians seem to have right what we always miss. Seeding the wind returns a storm and a little love you spread, true honest love, brings a whole world back to you. The proverbial storm. I know the context was about sin coming back to bite you, but I think in some ways, God's threats taught more of peace than anything else he ever said.

A handful of that sweet gossamer later, I know exactly what I've been missing in this whole affair. Right now, I'm planning, oh so gently, to rip Du's tin plated spine out of his back and beat him with it.


	50. Chapter 49

There is clarity in anger if you're willing to feel it. Right no, I have pure, unadulterated clarity coursing through my veins.

"Du, you have some 'splaining to do!" I howl as I kick the door open, hurling him across the room. Silly that it might work but I knocked on the door, ignored his permission to enter and knocked again. I continued like this until I heard him get up to come fine out what was going on and then kicked the door in his face. Childish but satisfying.

Children have a simple but ineffective view of the world. The idea that hurting an humiliating the one who did the same to us is rubbish and makes us feel worse in the long run but it feels so damn right at the time.

I've crossed the room almost before he hits the ground and he has less than half a second to react as I slam my boot into his chest, pinning him down.

"Stoppable, what is the meaning of this?" he demands, getting red in the face and making like I'm cracking his ribs. I'm not, I know how much pressure I'm using, but he's still squirming.

"You tell me, Du! I just had to rescue a bunch of panicking rookies and the wreckage of a girl who used to be the finest leader I've ever worked with from a trio of Bebe robots!"

"Stoppable, intelligence reported that there was no known presence in that sector."

"That's bull. If there was nothing there, you wouldn't have ordered a sweep!"

"Sweep? I ordered you to reconnoitre a possible addition to our list of active exits," the smaller man replies with that absurd fearlessness of his. I'll never understand that. Du's seen what I can do, he saw it when he helped the Tokyo insurgency cover up Fukoshima's death.

"What I want to know, wise guy, is why did Bonnie think that it was a sweep? She had the kids deployed in that way and there was a definite feeling that they were going to face something. I found this absurd because they were so confident, despite not having the tools to face any of Drakken's conventional toys and there's no way they could have taken on a Rider. No matter how green they are, they know that much."

"Riders are powerful but they are not nearly as dangerous as you make out, Stoppable."

"Are you kidding me?" I demand, not believing what I'm hearing, "Riders are as fast as Bebes, immune to most attack forms because they can override the possessed body's shutdown and pain responses, comparably strong to a Diablo and actually harder to destroy because of their ability to possess other citizens nearby. Add to that the fact that you can't recognise them easily and you have possibly the most dangerous thing that we can possibly face."

"Mr Stoppable, you're upset and irrational. I'm not willing to continue this discussion with you in this state. Ah," he pauses for a second as a pair of his more faithful members join us in the room, "will you please escort mister Stoppable out so that he can take the opportunity to cool off and consider his position?"

I'm dragged bodily from the room by the two young men but I think everyone present knows that I could have overthrown the base alone if I needed to in that moment.

* * *

Reasoning that I'm not going to get another chance at talking to Du any time soon, I return to the infirmary. Man, I wish that Anne were here, but unfortunately, she feels that she is more needed in New York at the moment than here with us. I guess she is the doctor, even if it has something to do with the fact that I've been suppressing her hallucinations.

"How's she doing?" I ask from the door, almost afraid to enter the room.

"She'll be fine. Look, you don't have to be here, this is my responsibility."

"Well then, if I'm not needed, I'll go and make myself a sandwich," I say lightly, turning to leave at a gentle saunter. I'm not much for using my powers for being silly but I gently phase out of sight as I shadow walk a few paces.

"Ron?" Bonnie demands as she wheels around to look in my direction, "huh?"

She gets up and comes to the door of the room, a worried look plastered across her face.

"Ron?" she asked, a hint of panic in her voice that rapidly sours to annoyance, "I can't believe he ditched me!"

"Boo!" I exclaim, returning to visibility a few inches from her face. She squeals slightly and stumbles back, dropping onto her bottom. I can't help but laugh as I offer her my hand, which she swats away with a grumble and rolls over to pick herself up. I just grin and tilt my head as I watch her bum rise into the air and arch nicely as she pushes up on her hands.

"You did that on purpose, Ron."

"Why else would I do something like that? Pretty strange accident, even for a weird loser like me!"

"You'll never forgive me for that will you?"

"The loser thing? Already have. You're the one that still has forgiveness issues on that subject," I reply with the most forgiving smile I can produce.

"I really do, don't I?"

"I wouldn't know, I'm not a mind reader. How is Penny anyway? Seriously?"

"The doctor's done what he can but we're a little limited for medical talent here. We've made her comfortable but she isn't likely to make it through the night," she replied, tears welling in her eyes.

"I'll do what I can to make her comfortable but I can't really call Saint in, nor can I get Anne back here on a moment's notice."

"Thanks, Ron, whatever you can do."

I settle down next to Penny and focus for a few moments, then flood her body with endorphins. She stirred for a moment and then lay still, the faintest of smiles on her face as relaxation set in throughout her body.

"That's my girl," I find the words coming out of my mouth as I rest a softened hand on her forehead and bring mine down to meet it.

Bonnie sits silently for a few minutes, just watching me tend the younger girl.

"You really do care about these kids, don't you?" she asks finally.

"I love each and every one of them."

"Come again?"

"I love my friends as much as I love myself, these kids are next up and then it's the rest of humanity. I never got the hang of the whole equinimity thing," I add sheepishly after a moment.

"I didn't know you cared so much."

"Then you didn't know me as well as you'd hoped," I reply flatly, not a point of accusation in there whatsoever. There's no reason to beat her up about it, it's her own disappointment more than anything else.

"How can you say such a thing?" she demands, genuinely shocked.

"Bonnie, the no nonsense thing is just something that re-emerged in the false-scapes. I'll relearn fear in a little while," I reply, smiling my best 'you know I'm a goof' smile.

"You've been lying?"

"You have any idea how hard it is to lie to people you love as much as I love you and the others?"

"You…love me?"

"That's what I said, isn't it? Don't worry about it. I really do."

She turned slowly and left the room without saying a word. I smile, wondering what the crack revelation that I've spent a large amount of time training to love anyone and everyone is going to have on her. Wade had an odd response when I explained it to him, but I suspect that had something to do with the surveillance issue he had while I was in the tank.

"She's going to have an interesting dialogue with herself, isn't she Penny. Now, listen up, I've got a message for someone in heaven…"

* * *

"I have a question for you, Wade," I announce, sitting down next to him in the dinning area. It still troubles me that Lunch Lady was the only person we could find to prepare the meals but she at least makes the best of what she has these days. I guess handing her a gun was a good way of redirecting some of that unconfined hatred for humanity that she has brewing in there.

"Shoot, Ron," he replies, looking up from his toxic looking meal. It tastes ok, but that doesn't make actually eating it any easier.

"Have there been a lot of changes around here that I haven't been told about? I've been sent on three different missions without any form of briefing and we've lost a kid on every one of them. To make life more difficult, everyone's making out like this is normal. We never lost anywhere near as many rookies on my watch, did we?"

"I really don't think we should be talking about this here, Ron, maybe we should take a walk…" he replies enigmatically and gets up, leading me from the food hall. I pause for just a second to mould as much of my meal into a sandwich as possible before jogging out to follow him into the access shafts.

"What was that all about, Wade?"

"Ron, if you start talking junk about Du in crowded paces, you'll disappear like a number of other folks have over the last six months. Why do you think I spent so much effort trying to find someone who we were assured was dead?"

"You were assured that I was dead?"

"Yeah, Du led the expedition to try to find you. Came back with your body, or at least parts of it. Old us that you tried to stare down a Bigggrin and lost. Some of us didn't think that added up, especially Brick and Bonnie. Now Brick's in Montana trying to keep that cell from suffering from more of the mysterious accidents that have plagued them and Bonnie, well, you've seen what Bonnie's like these days."

"Things have been happening, eh?"

"Ron, you thought it was hickey when you found out that every time we got attacked, there were old hands guarding the door and they inevitably died. You think that's the only thing around here that isn't kosher."

"I hadn't given it much thought until he wouldn't let me take Penny to the hospital. I know that it would probably get me arrested again but it's not as if I handed out secrets last time."

"He's not the only one who's gotten paranoid but you're right, he doesn't trust you and hence none of the rookies and the other kids will trust you. He's their infallible leader and if you listen to his telling of his exploits, he was the one who saved Yori from Fukoshima and rescued Bonnie from Drakken. He's a hero to these kids and he happily showed off his skills all the time in the beginning so most of them are lax in a way that you never let them get. I'm sorry Ron, but as far as most of these recruits are concerned, you're a lying glory hound and he's the messiah."

"This is majorly wrong. This is supposed to be a group of free individuals fighting for a cause, not some weird cult of personality for Du."

"That's what I've been thinking for a while, but I'm smart enough to avoid saying it. Look, I'm sorry about Penny, but you've got to keep your head down. I can't cover for you forever."

"Wade, you won't have to, I confronted Du earlier. I can see me having another accident very soon."

* * *

"Mr Stoppable, please come in," said Du Cordially. I find this odd because he's usually pretty damn caustic with me.

"William, what can I do for you?" I ask, sitting down in the seat he indicated.

"It's come to my attention that you've been attempting to sow discord amongst the ranks. While I'm gratified to know that you're not actually getting anywhere, I'd prefer it if you would refrain from doing, I am not going to stamp on your personal liberties but lets be clear, you do not want to make an enemy of me."

"I'm sorry, Du, were you just threatening me? Or at least attempting to intimidate me a little? I'm sorry, that's just the funniest thing I've ever heard!"

"Mr Stoppable, let me remind you that I am a match for the late Kim Possible in hand to hand combat and you, are well, you."

"I can assure you that I had the reputation I had when I disappeared for a damn good reason, Du."

"I'm sure you believed that Mr Stoppable, but I think the evidence says otherwise. You are nothing to these children. I took them from their suffering and brought them into the light, me, not you. They love and respect me, Stoppable, not you. You are just going to have to accept that."

"You honestly believe all of that, don't you, Du?" I ask, shocked.

"What exactly is wrong with believing the truth, Stoppable?" he asked a mild feeling of puzzlement creeping into his voice.

"You're insane, you know that, Du?"

"Given what you seem to believe about the world, Stoppable, I'll take that as a compliment. Now, if you wouldn't mind, I have work to do."

I get up and make to leave, stopping in the door to look back at his calm, working demeanour. I shake my head and move on.


	51. Chapter 50

On the upside, wizardly crap takes a lot of time so all I have to deal with here is a collection of summoned pets. I'm counting two demonites and a full fledged servant beast. I spin on my heel and cut the first demonite in half with the largest blade I can conjure. It won't slow it down much but having to pull itself back together should slow the cross breed freak down a little bit. This one looks like the bastard offspring of Josh Mankey and a Cthulhu cabana girl.

"So what did she offer you then?" I ask the demon conversationally as I spin to deliver a kick to the second demonite.

"Why would you care, Human?"

"Well, I'm always interested in motives, they're usually the easiest way of defeating your foe," I reply lightly.

"You think that you're going to be able to trick me into revealing the terms of my contract with her so that you can undo my bindings? It won't work, I have to kill you to earn my release. She was very careful with the wording of her agreements."

"A wise summoner, eh? Don't you just hate those?"

"Oh yes, there is nothing worse in the world and considering you mortals sicken me on a very specific level, with your biological functions…"

I'm about to respond as the squid demonite jumps on me from behind. I bear down under the weight and go sprawling, hitting my face on the floor.

I slam my elbow into the beast with enough passion to hurl it back, but it's not as if I can cause it to hurt. I get a few moments to try to leap to my feet, which I squander in desperate movement and I get jumped by the other one. Screaming in pain and disappointment at my defeat, I split a pair of long nails formed from the Lotus through my skin and nail the damn thing to the wall.

"You'll be looking for the binding for those things so that you can concentrate on defeating me," offered the Demon in a manner that oozed helpfulness. It pauses as I punch the second demonite clean through the head and slot it down over a nearby outcropping, "sorry, just thinking out loud," it finished, noting my expression.

"I can't work out which one I despise more, you or the demonites," I respond, mildly annoyed.

"Probably them. I'm only a lust demon. I was supposed to help distract Junior but I guess you're more of a threat so she sent me after you."

"Lust demon?"

"Oh yeah, I can take the form of that which you most desire and use it to torment you. I just assumed that it wouldn't have much effect because she's dead."

"She's dead?"

"Yeah. Wait a minute, you're not entirely what your inner thoughts would have me believe are you?"

"I'd really hope not."

"Complicated people are very common in my line of work, but they usually come out very simple. You, however, are very simple but reading you is proving very difficult."

"Let me guess," I offer, parrying a downward slash and twisting it into the way of the charging demonite, "I don't have any threads to pull on to unravel what's hidden in there?"

"That would be a solid analogy, yes," it responds dragging the demonite around and throwing it at me. The thing shreds into a million shards on a sharp net of tiny metal barbs.

"What's getting in your way?"

"You have a lot of love in you for a mortal," it replies in a way that almost conveys respect, scooping up a handful of ruined demonite and throwing it towards my face.

"Always with the love, isn't it?"

"Apparently so," it replies as I manage to get a metal encased hand up to catch the sludge and throw it back. "Don't you just have that?"

"I technically have no arena for hate. I merely feel utter contempt for you as a mortal."

"At least you're capable of talking about your feelings."

A heavy paw lashed down as I realise that the thing is a shape shifter, but it looks laboured, as if that is not a form that it should have any business assuming.

"That was painful for you, wasn't it?" I ask, feeling a combination of insane concern and a little insight.

"I take on the form of your greatest desire, fool! I'm not intended to fight like this."

"How are you intended to fight?"

"If I had had time to prepare, you would have found an interesting redhead to talk to upstairs who would have consumed your soul in the first kiss," it spits back to me.

"You're a succubus?" I ask incredulously, feeling foolish asking a question like that to something so androgynous.

"I'm anything you need me to be Ronnie," Kim replies.

* * *

I finally slipped. I admittedly haven't ended up fighting my greatest desire but it certainly is weird trying to kick Kim's biscuit. He chose well, adopting both Kim's form and her fighting style. The idea of being destroyed by one's desires is a strange and disturbing thing.

It's interesting, however that it would be a hell of a lot harder to hit Bonnie if he had taken that form or if he had taken the shape of Anne, I'd be in even more trouble. I'm not in love with Anne but trying to hurt something that looks more like a mother to me than my own is shudder-worthy.

"You like what I've done with my hair, Ron?" she asks, vaulting over me and kicking out at the back of my legs. Momentarily distracted, I don't shift positions and end up staring up at her. I'll freely admit that her hair is nice. Sort of Princess Leah buns. Nice neck access and it really frames her face, making the small amount of puppy fat that graces her chin look delightfully strokeable.

"You know, I can see right up your nose…" I say lightly as I hammer my fists down onto the stone, causing a mild shudder to the shaft and propelling myself onto my feet. She twists and tries to kick out but I mould my body around it and then hammer my twinned hands into the heel. She sails away for a second.

Taking the initiative, I grab as much of the lotus as I can, forming it into a sledge hammer and take off after the woman, reasoning that the bindings for the demonites will be in her possession.

* * *

"Nobody dumps Kim Possible!"

The scream is one I've heard before and it was as hot then as it is now. The psychotic redhead on the other end of the cry doesn't seem nearly as impressive, however. Maybe it's the fact that she's trying to regrow her arms at this juncture.

Reweaving the lotus into the hammer, I return my attention to Kult. She's done her reading. I've been dodging the effects of that Junju wand for the last few minutes. Should have expected her to have some arcana that didn't take long to cast.

"I'm impressed, you found a witch-toy that doesn't require a ritual to make it work. African or Middle East?"

She offers no answer and I'm forced to break Kim's neck for the third time. I've noticed that the demon has to rearrange its body each time it gets injured. Catching her lunges and whipping her head around backwards is an effective way of dealing with the issue, I suppose.

"You know, this one is really trying my patience. How about sending it back or at least stopping it attacking me," I ask as Kim's body clatters to the floor once again.

"Why would I do that? It'll eventually find the right form to destroy you."

"It isn't changing form. I've killed Kim here at least a dozen times already and it keeps getting back up. I know it isn't real so it has no power over me."

"Oh how blind you can be," she replies with a wicked smile.

"Ron? What's going on?" asks a terrified voice behind me. The thing has Bonnie by the throat and has its hand down her pants, rummaging.

"You know, that was the dumbest thing I've ever seen; you just got me annoyed."

It pauses, looking at me as if to say 'you've been angry this entire fight'.

"Demon, what is your definition of soul?"

"The god-given force of goodness that protects you from the darkness, granting self control and the ability to earn grace."

"Nice use of technical terms. Let me introduce you to the part of me that doesn't have a soul."

Its puzzlement remains as a copy of me coalesces in the air before the pair of girls that made up the demon. He looks at them with a barely contained mixture of anger and lust.

"Those two are a demon. You can't have your soul stolen because by the succubus definition, you don't have one. Bonnie there is part of the whole; have fun," I say to my double and I watch as the darkes expression I've ever seen from him and I fear, ever will, breaks across his face. I return to attacking the witch who made the mistake of looking. I swear her body tried to turn into a pillar of salt and her hair turned white to prove it.

* * *

The crumpled body of Olivia Kult lies at my feet. I tried threats, I tried reason, eventually I tried the lotus blade and it stuck. I kneel and close her shocked eyes, muttering the Catholic benediction for witches.

At least now, she has peace from her madness.

In the centre of the island, I find a young girl, innocent, virginal, bound tightly and wearing a scold's bridal and something that looks like a chastity belt. There is also the ichor of a dead demon here. I suspect whatever Kult had planned was going to extract blood in a different way. Using tiny blades of Lotus, I scour the very rock of any trace of her actions.

Senior was there to greet me as I walked over the edge of the pit with the girl in my arms and didn't pass comment as I asked for him to get flame throwers and scorch the very rock down there. We reached an agreement that night, one that would last for a long time.

* * *

Author's Note: This may be the last Chapter that I post for a while, I refuse to be less than 5 ahead at any given point so unless I produce something extra in the next few days, you'll have to wait until I return from Hong Kong on the 25th. While i'm away, i'll be working on some extra special stuff for you guys that will probably take the form of Ron Conners: What Rons May Come, which will actually explain the question more than a few of you have raised about why Saint can't just bring Kim back from the dead. Expect complex metaphors, to learn about many different religion's versions of heaven and hopefully some artwork to go with it, but i'm not promising anything.

If you need something to read while i'm gone, look out CaptainKodak's illustrated version of the Lotus Bloom. The story is excellent and the art fairly evocative, even if his writing style makes me want to claw my eyes out. Best ideas man in the business and the conversation between the mind-controlled Ron and Kim is heartwrenching.


	52. Chapter 51

"How many kids do you actually think you have, Ronald?" asks Katz in that strange, mild mannered way of his.

"I have three children of my own and I act as a father for Shella Pains between her mother's relationships. Why?"

"Now Ronald, we both know that isn't true. Shella worked out a little while ago that you're not her biological father but she admittedly still thinks of you as dad. But what I meant is, do you realise what role you seem to be playing for a lot of the young people in this organisation? You travel from cell to cell with that Bonnie girl, who as far as it goes, may as well be your wife. You play with those kids who don't have parents and you spread joy to even those who do. I think that counts as more of a father than most of the men in this rabble."

"Or maybe it makes me like a cross between Santa, Ronald McDonald and the grim reaper. I come along and sometimes their parents don't come back."

"You know Ronald, I think you sell yourself a little short. I've never seen a little girl look so proud as little Lynn when she found out that her daddy was actually the weird blonde fellow who held hands with her mother and rescued her from the monsters in the closet."

"Heh, yeah, most dads don't take their kids into the realm that the monsters live in and show them how t hurt the things, do they?"

"No, they don't. Who's the only person willing to beat little Ryu-chan in sparring?"

"That would be me."

"And why do you do that?"

"Because it's the only way he'll learn."

"Exactly. And why don't the other's beat him?"

"Some of them actually can't but the rest are trying to avoid upsetting Yori."

"You know that she still asks about you every time I go out there?" Katz had upgraded himself to some kind of multi-faith spiritual leader in the wake of the rebellion. 'Faith, is the only thing keeping us human,' he liked to say these days.

"No, I didn't know that. What does Hirotaka have to say about that?"

"He's jealous, as you might expect, but he knows that if he asked you, you'd not even kiss her cheek in greeting. He's not jealous of what you might do, he's jealous that you were her first love. Besides, he gets his own back by asking about Bonnie."

I can't help but laugh at that.

"Happy families in the east, eh?"

"Oh yes. Steven thinks the world of you too you know. Natalie wouldn't obey a word he said until you came along."

"The man's a soldier. Is it any wonder he couldn't get through to his child?"

"You believe that she's his?"

"Does it matter? She isn't mine any more than her sister is and he loves that little chocolate bear like no other. They're lucky to have one another. She brings out the best in him."

"Remember when you said that to me about you and someone else, Ronald?"

Indeed I do.

* * *

_Nearly seven years ago…_

"Look, Rabbi, I really don't understand what I'm doing here."

I pause and look around his office for a moment. Office really isn't the right word but hey, it's a room with all the weird knick-knacks that a religious leader accumulates over the years. There are trophies and music memorabilia and framed tickets to Moon Beyond Ios.

"You're talking about your feelings, presumably about becoming the figurehead to mister Lodden's rebel movement," he replies in a way that can only be described as Jewish. Put this man and Woody Allen in a room and they'd reach critical mass.

"I guess I am but I don't understand why. I'm not a leader, I never have been. I was a sidekick for nearly four years and risked my life for the insane girl I eventually fell for and failed to save."

"Ronald, you have an exemplary record. According to the files that Mr Lodden gave me when he asked me to become your 'second-in-command' here, you saved Kimberly on no less than a dozen occasions. She may have done the same for you many more times, but that still shows a great deal of courage on your part."

I sit silently as he continues.

"There is an example on record where Mr Lodden's android form and yourself went to the darkest Amazon to try to collect a flower to save her life. You took fought no less than four villains in one afternoon to attempt to find a library book of all things. I'd say that you had a hell of a lot more courage than Kim did, especially with your inferior abilities at the time. Now, you're some kind of combined strength messiah, if I understood that Immortal fellow correctly."

"Something like that. Look, powerful, brave and loyal I may be, but I'm no hero and people have no business following me anywhere."

"Why do you say that Ronald?"

"Heroes don't kill. I have and I will again if I need to. Kim didn't kill but I do apparently. Maybe she just brought out the best in me; maybe that's why I never killed anyone…"

"From what I can tell from Kim's record, she could have killed any number of times. Why do you think that you did and she didn't?"

"I don't know, Rabbi. You want me to say that she was a better person? Because that seems like a forgone conclusion at this point," I reply, the weight of the world bearing down on me.

"Actually, Ronald, I'm pretty sure that you're the only reason that she kept herself together all those times. And I think she stopped you from doing anything that could have been considered vicious."

"Maybe she brought out the best in me, but that doesn't help the fact that I'm a murderer."

"Honestly, Ron, I don't think that she did anything to actually stop you, while I have footage on that thing," he says pointing to a Kimmunicator with an archive memory unit, "that shows you talking her down or holding her wrists to stop her beating people during the darker moments. She wept openly because you told her that you were disappointed in her once. I think that despite your flaws, Ronald, you bring out the best in people, not Kim."

"Pretty dream, Rabbi."

"Answer me this, Ronald, if you're not the hero everyone makes out, why the hell did you save Bonnie that night three years ago?"

_Back in the present…_

* * *

"And what happened just one day later?"

"Steve's cell got attacked and I lead the relief effort. That was the night that Monique got caught in the disruptor blast and I had to help save her."

"Modesty really isn't a becoming thing on you, Ronald, you feel that you have nothing to admit to and it irritates me. You rescued her from the street after she collapsed and single-handedly held up the advance of Drakken's forces to get her to safety."

"Calling anything I do with duplication 'single-handed' is pushing definitions a little, Rabbi."

"Just because you do it with magic and Kim did it with the ability to jump far further than Lodden was ever able to explain doesn't make your efforts any different."

I pause for a second, remembering Wade waxing on about that very subject. I'd never really given the whole leaping twenty feet into the air thing much thought but she did it routinely. Wade couldn't figure it, as if her joints were behaving like those of a non-humanoid. The idea of Kim with the legs of a grasshopper was strange, but she wore it well.

There was something about the weight spiral effect or some such that made it practically impossible for a human to jump more than about seven feet but I can't say that I understood what he was talking about, I myself could happily jump thirty feet before I learned to fly.

"Look, Jerry," I begin, using the name I've not dared use in all the years I've known the man, "I'm just a normal guy who happens to have gifts, trying to make the world a better place. If I brighten a few children's days, then more the better. I have a big heart, that's what made it so easy for Arahat to train me. Now, was there something else?"

"Yes. I think we should talk about Damien. He idolises you, you know."

* * *

Author's Note: Not entirely sure if i should keep the time designations here. The wonders of the Orient never cease... 


	53. Chapter 52

Ever seen one of those TV shows do an 'Evil-twin-iverse' thing? With a holographic Wade at my side, I find myself fighting a trio of Global Justice agents, trying to stop them getting past me to the prone form of Kim and beating her brains out.

Not that she doesn't deserve it, my inner Jew points out. On an eye-for-an-eye basis, we should be fed to the lions. Apparently, we're two of the most dangerous criminals on earth and just last week, Kim finally managed to murder Mrs Shego Lipsky, one of the braves human beings ever to wear pink.

This is really not the sanest place I've been thrust.

"Run this whole thing by me again, Wade?"

"You remember I explained how Drakken's machine worked? It took a record of your life and spun it out into a sequence of mathmatical models where the machine changed various details of your life and extrapolated from there. The heavy population of Synthetics is because apart from the core characters, the computer needed a lot of runtime.

"You were then transferred into these synthetic universes using much the same process as Drakken used to deposit you in the TV that time.

"In this world, you apparently developed a form of psychotic delusion some time after going to camp Wannaweep, probably as a result of your mother's treatment of you. Kim stopped talking to you for a while and you became gothy and angst ridden. Eventually, your madness boiled over into potent, manipulative psychosis. You approached Kim, who true to form, fell for your badboy thing and before you know it, you'd moulded her into being equally as psychopathic and cruel.

"The worst part of it is that only the fact that your insanity gives you focus is keeping her from being the boss of your little evil empire. In all honesty, I think that we should just kill this Kim and move on through the scenarios."

"Don't suppose you can get any control over where we end up next?" I ask, parrying a heavy stroke from one of the GJ agents.

"Ron, we went through this before you killed Beam, no, there is no way that I can control where you end up next. And before you think of it, no, I don't think that a dose of Ron-shine is going to bring her out of being a stone cold psychopath."

Before I can answer, the trio surge back at me, despite the heavy blows I've landed on them up to this point. In one practiced move, I shift my weight on my soles and snap my hips into a circle, carrying my arms in a great sweep round my shoulders. All three are knocked back onto the ground groaning.

Finally, with tears in my eyes, I kneel next to the insane beauty that I apparently made and take her head gently in my hands. She feels so warm and gentle, truly beautiful. With a swift twist, I break her neck, ending her life as this version of me ended her innocence so long ago. He body twitches once and is still.

I have a chance to look the nearest GJ agent in the eyes before the world goes white like it did that first time after Brockmeir shot me.

* * *

Author's Note: Holy crap! Actual plot exposition! Is it just me, or is my version of Drakken a hell of a lot smarter than the versions in the series and most other people's Fics?

This Chapter actually leads directly into the next one, but I didn't want to make life confusing by having the shift occur within the chapter so it ended up as a short one and the story that I actually want to tell.


	54. Chapter 53

The light of the transition dulls and fades, the accompanying sound of static dying with it. I'm not liking what I'm seeing right now. I'm wearing fairly uncomfortable clothing, what feels like a weighted vest of some kind and I can sense someone female and very tense stood behind me to my left.

Oh, and there's a mid-sized black man, who could only be described as 'Nigga', a wannabe Cripp, pointing what looks like a nickel plated 9mm at my face. I stand there for a few seconds before breathing the words, 'Wade, a little clarity?"

"You're a cop and he's a ganger wanted for drug dealing. He has no rap for armed assault, just possession charges and one rap for soliciting prostitution."

I don't look away from the black man's eyes for a second while Wade is talking. How I ended up being a cop is anyone's guess at this juncture and I can feel the fear radiating off the dealer.

"Oh, and his name is Babyshoes," adds Wade helpfully, as if that was a real name.

Slowly, I begin to advance, watching sweat break out from every pore on the guy. He obviously got the drop on me because the buckle on my holster is still closed.

I'm now no more than an inch away from the barrel. I'm looking clean down it.

"What you think you're doin' man?" Babyshoes demands, a look of panic in his eyes, "I'm gonna shoot y'all."

"I doubt that," I reply flatly, opening my mouth and wrapping it around the barrel, "oo, dun aff de gutffs."

After about one tenth of a second, his hand begins to shake as he tries to get together the courage to apply first pressure on the trigger. In a single smooth motion, I twist my head, pulling the pistol clear of his finger and casting it clattering to the floor.

Taking his still shaking hand, I gently move it behind his back and snap the first half of the cuffs onto it.

"Babyshoes, I am arresting you on suspicion of the sale of illegal narcotics. You have the right to remain silent during questioning. Should you choose not to take this right, other hand please, thank you, should you choose not to take this right, anything you do say will be taken down and used against you in a court of law. You have the right to have an attorney present during your questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you by the state. Do you understand these rights?"

He nods an affirmative and I ease his head down so that he can get into the back of the cruiser.

I look over at my partner, who looks like she's about to wet herself. I've never met this person before.

"Don't worry. We'll head back in a few minutes. You get in the cruiser. I've got to take a few minutes to let the adrenaline go down."

She just nods dumbly and gets into the passenger seat.

"Ok, Wade, what the hell is going on?"

"You want the full history?"

"Might as well," I reply, realising that it's about five below out here and my breath is streaming. Only the fact that I'm wearing a bullet proof vest is keeping me warm, not that I actually feel the cold any more.

"Directly after the moodulator incident, this version of you asked Kim out, reasoning that if she wasn't insanely in love with you any more, you could at least have some fun dates. She chose not to lie to you about how the damn things worked and you went out for a few months. She cheated on you with Walter Nelson after four months and you broke it off. The whole thing scuppered your friendship.

"Tara moved in to fill the gap, given that she'd had a thing for you for a while and as with Kim, you built her up into a strong independent young woman. She convinced you to join the Police Cadets program and you made full officer by the time you were nineteen, for extreme acts of bravery.

"Kim married a guy she met in college, a pre-med Adonis before you ask, and is currently living on the other side of town. You're presently a beat cop who's turned down promotion to sergeant on three separate occasions because you're still hooked on the thrill of hero-work. You not only work for the Upperton constabulary but you have links to international law enforcement through me.

"The last time Kim and you spoke was during the Diablo incident when you came out of retirement to help her save her father and then the world. I think you'll be gratified to know that she now thinks you're a bastard because you shot Eric through the head after he electrocuted her and offered to put her out of her misery when she was thinking of giving up.

"I honestly don't think this world could get much more different from the first one you were in, though in six days you're going to have an encounter with Kim that will be hard for all concerned."

"Great, what are we, fated lovers or something?" I ask, trudging back to the cruiser, having slipped the pistol into an evidence bag.

"That may actually be the case. Regardless, there is more you should know," he continues before I cut him off.

"I think I'd like to see how this one plays out."

* * *

We walk in through the door of the precinct with Babyshoes between us and the wonders never cease. The old brown-brick building looks like it has seen better days and the hall looks like something out of an old gumshoe movie.

My partner looks up at the duty desk, then at me and whispers to me.

"Don't worry, I won't tell her what you did, but you know that it'll get around the precinct soon enough. You'd be better off telling her before it gets to her otherwise."

The girl's name is Janice Hobble and she's Duke Hobble's daughter. The old traffic cop is now the head of his division of the sheriff's department yet she's turning a beat in the inner city with me.

Behind the desk is Tara, brilliant blue eyes shining out at me.

"I guess she still has a thing for me," I mutter so that only Wade can hear.

"Ron, that's one of the things I've been trying to tell you. You're married to her and you're having issues."

"What?"

"Yeah, she took sergeant and assumed that you would too but you never did. She understands that you have no talent for paperwork but she's terrified of the risks you take and resents you for not thinking of her when you take them.

"Oh, and she thinks you resent her because she gets paid more."

"I don't do I?"I ask rather louder than I anticipated.

"Do you what?"

"Resent her for earning more than me. It doesn't sound like the sort of thing I'd do."

"No you don't, but that doesn't stop her fear."

"Well, given that I don't have a problem with it, I'm sure I can work something out," I say to him, then realise that Tara, Janice and Babyshoes are all staring at me. "What?"

"What was that all about Ron?" Tara asks as if I'm going to snap at her.

"Sorry baby, I'm just having a hard day. Adrenaline is moving a little fast. I love you and I don't want to hurt you in any way and I think it's absolutely Bon-Diggety that you earn more money in our relationship and I'm so proud of you for doing so. Now, we have one gentleman with a silly name for narcotics and armed assault on a police officer."

"Was it you again?" she asks in a manner that I can't decide if it's sadness or annoyance.

"Yes, it was me, but that's because I was the one of us on the driver's side of the car. Didn't fire a shot, did you Babyshoes?"

"No sir. I ain't never seen noone so crazy brave. Just stared me down an I couldn't ice him."

"Remember what I said about the right to remain silent? This would be a good time to shut up."

"Yes sir."

* * *

The rest of the day is pretty quiet, with a domestic disturbance and a heated discussion between two guys about who dinged whom. I told Tara that I'd make something nice for supper and in order to keep that promise, I head down to the farm foods market on 5th and north. I'm thinking roast beef and vegetables with a good wine.

I'm just getting to the counter when I realise who's working behind it. It's Monique. I'm all primed up to say hello when Wade appears beside me.

"Ron, I wouldn't bother if I were you. Just be polite and make like you've never met before."

"Why?"

"She took Kim's side during the break up and spread a lot of trash about you not being any good in bed and whatnot. Things took a turn for the even worse a couple of years ago when you beat the tar out of her husband when you answered a domestic to find him smacking her about with a belt. You got a disciplinary and she got beaten harder. She really doesn't like you and in fairness, you aren't her biggest fan either."

"That really doesn't sound like the Monique I know and love."

"Taking sides in break-ups can do strange things to people."

* * *

Four minutes before my shift is due to end, we get a call to the nice district that marks the boundary between Middleton and Upperton. I've not been out here since the second time we got called out to help Paisley, well, for reasons other than fighting Diablos. That man sure had a problem with buttons. Safety features or no, it doesn't strike me as a wise idea to try doing an Indiana Jones roll under your automatic garage door.

"Car184, this is dispatch, proceed to 1412 Sycamore, domestic in progress."

"Dispatch, we're across town and nearly due to clock, isn't there anyone else to deal with this, over?" I ask into the mouthpiece.

"Sorry Ronnie, Hobble seems to think this one is something that you'll be best dealing with. Might be another chance at a commendation," replies Tara's bitter voice through the dispatch.

"Sergeant Stoppable, I suggest you take that one up with the traffic chief, not me."

The link goes quiet after a few seconds.

"What was that all about, Ron?" asks Janice from beside me.

"I'm not entirely sure, but I think she thinks your dad's helping me kill myself. He isn't is he?"

"Ron, you take crazy risks all the time but I've never seen you get more than a couple of cracked ribs. You stared down that giant toad guy when he tried to kidnap Tara and you single-handedly defeated those agility enhanced fox-themed bank robbers. I don't think you're trying to get yourself killed, your just pushing your luck harder than is healthy."

"Good. I thought I might be doing something out of character for me. Never be normal!" I declare, gunning the engine and sending use tearing across town towards the swanky district.

"Hey, Ron, it's only a call to domestic central, there's no need to rush."

"Domestic central?"

"Yeah," she replies as we hurtle around a corner on two wheels, "Jamie and I used to get called up there all the time."

"Jamie was her last partner, Officer James Holiday," Wade chips in helpfully from the back seat.

"So Officer Hobble, what can you tell me about this then?"

"Same thing every time, angry redhead wife beating the fuck out of her husband for being none too cautious about sleeping with nurses. Last time I got called out here, we had to pull her off him after he gave her gonorreah. Kept yelling about sixteen kinds of kung fu. Can you believe that?"

"You know, I have a horrible feeling this may be my ex-girlfriend," I reply with nothing but grim emotions filling up my mind, "I guess the whole dating hotties thing has paid off nicely for her."

"Bad blood?"

"Lots, apparently," I reply and I'm greeted with a confused look, "listen, when we get in there, you stop the husband, I'm going to restrain the wife. I'm not willing to watch you get hurt, k?"

* * *

The house is pretty much as you'd expect for Kim Possible and her family's money really. Having apparently married a rich golden boy from a lineage of doctors, it seems probable that there's a lot of his coin in here too.

"Wade, sitch me. I thought the life changing crap was in six days."

"Well, this is on record, but it isn't really flagged as anything much in the database. Seems that you treat this as totally routine, eventually threatening her with a night in the tank, which gets her to back down. She begins divorce proceedings three days from now and the algorithm begins to get hazy in six."

"Great, I feel like I'm doomed."

"Starcross's lovers, eh?"

"In fair Middleton where we lay our scene," I reply darkly, thinking of the opening passage of Romeo and Juliet.

"Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean," mutters Wade as we approach the door.

* * *

I hammer on the glass lightly with my night stick, though not hard enough to break the glass.

"Upperton constabulary! We're responding to a complaint from the neighbours. They were concerned when they heard shouting!" I find myself yelling unheard through the door as another crash reached my ear. A plate, if I'm not mistaken.

I turn and nod silently to Janice who disappears around the side of the property in search of another point of ingress. If I'm right about the owner of this house, then it's likely that Tara's anger at Hobble sending me here is justified. She doesn't want Ron going near his first love, which I can kind of understand, especially if she thinks I'd resent her for having more Claude in her payslip.

Hell, if Kim cheated on a guy who cared for her as much as I used to, well, I think she made her bed really.

As I hear a female scream, I let my mind loose and slam my shoulder into the door between the two locks. I'm not banking on any deadbolts being closed so it should be enough to breach the door.

Fortunately, I'm right. The door gives smoothly under my weight and I'm into the hallway. It's a nice enough house, probably a hell of a lot nicer than my house in this world. It's plain as well, only two pictures on the wall, independent pictures of Kim and her husband, who, I'm surprised to learn looks more like me than the pretty boys she dated in the past. I pad gently down the aisle next to the stairs, past the only other ornamentation in the hallway, a small shelf with a trio of cut glass items on them, items which hold no real significance yet couldn't be considered art because they were obviously not designed to be looked at carefully.

Reaching an archway on my left, I glance through it and suddenly find myself struck with an imperative to act. In less than a moment, my pistol is holstered and my arm thrust over the threshold. In that single, swift action, my hand comes into contact with a smooth object and I pitch into the room to redirect its momentum. Back on my feet, I look down into my hands to see a decorative collector's plate with a trio of Chinese Characters nestled in amidst leaves and birds.

Despite the feelings of shock being directed at me from two parties, I can't help but snigger as I look at the plate with the words, "You'll need luck" painted on it. I gently place it on the nearest flat surface and look in the direction it was thrown from.

"I like your choice of dinnerware. We've had a complaint about a domestic incident from the neighbours. We're obliged by state law to check it out. I'm Officer Stoppable and that is Officer Janice Hobble behind you," I say, gesturing past a shocked looking Kim to the younger, armed girl outside the kitchen window.

"Now, if we're all ready to be calm, can we please talk about this before my shift ends and I'm forced to treat one of you to a night in the tank so I can get home and prove to a certain desk sergeant that I'm proud of her?" I ask, trying to put on my best, reasonable officer voice, gleaned from years of watching Cops. Man that show is addictive.

I stand there with a mild expression on my face for a few moments before a blizzard of curses starts emanating from the compact redhead by the kitchen. Some of it is directed at me but the majority is directed at the other guy, who, thankful for a reprieve from the projectiles settles on the couch with an expression that speaks volumes.

I nod to Janice, who goes back around the front of the house and heads for the cruiser. I'm seriously praying that this Ron retained his sense of humour. I sit down next to the guy and offer my hand.

"Ron Stoppable, four months back in '05. What's your sentence so far?"

"What? Oh, three years this June."

"Sorry to bring this up," I smile as her tempo and inflections change as she realises tha no-one is listening to her, "but I was told that you were some kind of Pre-med Adonis. You look a little more like me than I was expecting."

As he gets ready to respond, I glance over at Kim, who seems to be reaching the high notes and bursting blood vessels in doing it. At least she isn't being violent anymore.

"I was all that pretty when we first met," he smiles back at me, looking rather like the sheepish guy I used to see in the mirror, "but the workload pilled up and I was forced to sacrifice my time in the gym so that I could still be with her and get all of it done. Next you know, I'm looking like this and regretting moving off campus." His nervous smile is endearing to say the least and I know it's genuine.

"Gotta know, you seem too much like me for me not to ask. She ever cheat on you?"

He sighs deeply for a few seconds then responds, "Yes, just the once, just after we got married. He was pretty and vapid and it only happened once. I trust her that it hasn't happened again."

I'm considering my response, just like Immortal taught me, listen before thinking up your next point, when Janice returns. She has in her hands exactly what I was hoping for. I take the air horn from her, point it in Kim's direction and fire off a burst that lasts more than ten seconds. She stops yelling after a moment.

"Time out, Kimbo! Come sit down before I take you back to the precinct for an evening of chilling with your peeps. Believe me, a night of watching your back and trying to avoid going to the bathroom will make this guy seem like a wonderful option. Good, now sit and we'll talk."

And we did. I got them calm and discussing their problems after less than ten minutes, though it required me to perform one of the nine forbidden transformations on Kim. I short-circuited her brain so that she wouldn't be able to get angry until she slept again.

It seems that no amount of talking is going to defuse the lack of trust from the mutual cheating but we leave knowing that there won't be anymore fighting, nor any makeup sex for either of them tonight.

* * *

Back to the precinct to change and retrieve my car and I'm on my way again. It takes some prompting from Wade, but I find my way home without much difficulty. If I wasn't with Wade, I could have probably just driven down this street and successfully found my little patch of suburbia.

The broad wooden porch has a swing and a pair of rocking chairs on it with a small table that almost certainly plays host to my home-made lemon-and-lime-ade in the summer months. The three neat little windows have simple nets in them and there's a powerful mixer sat on the kitchen windowsill.

I'm living in the house I always dreamed of having. The sort of house that you'd find on 'Leave it to Beaver' or 'Father Knows Best.'

Sticking my keys into the door and turning, I twist so that I can open it with my back and step through into the hall. The neatly polished floor creaks a little under my feet and I can't help the urge that I happily give in to.

"Honey, I'm home!" I call out with a broad smile on my face.

"Dude," says Mankey, pacing out of what I assume is the den in his socks, "where have you been? She's really steamed and asked me to cook her dinner. I thought you'd be out late."

I just raise an eyebrow. Mankey and Tara dated for a while and now he's plying her with fine cuisine? Well, answers before anger.

"Mind explaining what that means exactly?" I ask, not necessarily in his direction as I put the bags down on the worktable in the centre of the kitchen. It looks like the sort of thing I used to dream of making when I was in shop class. The initials carved onto the edges of things make it seem like I took shop in senior year.

"Dude, I've been Tara's best friend for years. After you got around the fact that I'm gay, we've been good buds as long as I don't behave camp in your house. She was upset; I came over."

"Mankey, the ultimate golden-boy, is gay?" I ask, again to no-one in particular.

"Makes sense, Ron. He is kind of effeminate," Wade chips in.

"Ron, are you talking to someone else in here? You're behaving kind of oddly." Mankey asks.

"Joshua, you have no idea. You cooked yet then?"

"No, I was going to wait for her to get out of the shower then ask her what she wanted. Where were you anyway?"

"Answers come later my friend. You aren't a vegetarian are you?" I ask and he shakes his head, "well, in that case, I think you're in for a treat. I brought enough for four so if you have a…er…partner you want to call and bring over, I'm sure we can make it stretch. Beef-haunch with rosemary and thyme with vegetables cooked in the juices!"

He just looks at me with what looks like a mixture of lust and longing in his eyes for a few moments, then composes himself.

"Ron, you don't have to do this, I know you aren't a big fan of Jamie. It does sound good though."

"Lets just say that I'm in the mood for a complete fresh start and I've effectively forgotten everything about this Jamie of yours. Even if he behaves like an ass…look, I said behaves, not 'is'…after the day I've had, I could use some playful antagonism. Just, you know, ask him to keep the camp down and bring good wine."

I turn my back on Josh as he looks like a girl being invited to the prom and begin acquainting myself with what seems to be my dream kitchen. In moments, my slightly rusty hands begin to massage beef and pour oil, herbs and vegetables flying.

* * *

Author's notes: I'm not entirely sure where this chapter came from, though I was casting around for another elseworld [alternate reality and this just came to mind. I think it has a little inspiration from KP: the thin blue line but I think it's mostly drawn from a combination of my imagination and the marital troubles of the cop on Heroes.

This is definitely my single favourite elseworld yet and I like the character modifications so much that I'm actually considering trying to expand this odd little story into a novel (refitting all the characters of course).


	55. Chapter 54

"Bonnie."

"Ron."

"Open up to me."

"No."

"No?"

"No."

I look at her calmly for a few moments. Part of me wants to scream the question, "why?" at the rooftops and through the halls of our subterranean refuge but I know that won't help. Instead I wait, remaining open and letting as much love as I can muster simply radiate from my body. I don't have to wait long.

"I'm sorry, Ron, I just can't."

"Can't? What do you mean?"

"I can't talk to you and I can't explain why. I'm sorry."

I think I know what's going on here and it sickens me. Back in high school, reputation, truth, compassion and on certain occasions, reality had never stopped Bonnie Rockwaller from speaking her mind on any number of subjects. To get her to stop, it would take a great deal of leverage, something that I have never actually encountered, though I suspect that I might know of the one thing that Du is using.

"Okay then, you don't have to talk. Instead, I'll explain this and you can correct whatever needs correcting once I'm done.

"You're crazy about me," I say flatly, watching as her eyed grow impossibly wide with shock. "There's no need to deny it, I can see it in your face and feel it washing off you like rain in a storm; I mean a lot to you and know that I genuinely care for you. I'm guessing here, but when I went missing, you were just beginning to get this feeling and felt like the carpet had been pulled out from under you. I was the first guy you ever wanted to stay with rather than surrendering your sexuality like something to be bargained with; I understand the faith that must have taken after having been the queen bee for so long.

"Du comes along and you're old habits come back, maybe as a safety net, it doesn't matter so I don't really care. You cosy up to him and make like a nice obedient piece of arm-candy. This has the effect of making his takeover all the easier because of your high status in the rebellion.

"Du starts making changes and you try to reign him in as much as you can but things go from bad to worse and most of the problems seem to come where you've interfered. You start blaming yourself for things and your confidence is shot. Eventually, the Bonnie that we all knew and came to love was buried under a mixture of defensive deference and old queen bee behaviour.

"Then I come back and Du tells you simply that you have to get me killed or he'll tell me how you betrayed the rebellion and you can't bear to have my image of you tarnished like that. Meanwhile, you're torn because he's told you that if you tell me anything that's going on, he'll torture and kill me. Am I about right here?"

She looks at me dumbfounded for minutes on end. Slowly tears gather in the corners of her eyes and a glisten I haven't seen in far too long takes form. I don't enjoy seeing her tears but her eyes sparkle when she'd allowing herself to be completely vulnerable. I'm one of only a few people who have ever seen this or ever will see it.

Slowly, she falls into my arms, wailing and apologising, begging my forgiveness. She tells me everything and makes only one adjustment to the story I told; she'd known that I cared for her when I used to look out for her and stop Kim breaking her to pieces.

* * *

I now have my most potent ally back. If there is one thing that I know Bonnie is very good at, it's shaping the world of others. Now all I have to do is keep my head down, survive my next mission for Du and maybe then I can help put this little popsicle stand back in business.

One of these days, I'll be able to fade into the sunset and leave the whole rebellion thing to others.

* * *

"Jim, stop thinking about your boyfriend and haul ass over here!" I yell through the cacophony of gunfire and blasters.

"Shut your hole, Stoppable," he spits back at me as he lands in the impromptu foxhole, "at least I make a point of staying with mine! No man who lets one love die then another get treated like Bonnie has, has any right to comment on my life!"

"You missed the one I let get raped!" I reply cheerfully over the hubbub, "and the fact that I 'took advantage' of your mother!"

"You're not going to get me to back down like that, Blondie!" he replies, more than a little annoyed at the mention of Anne's interesting interpretation of reality.

I take the opportunity provided by his firing to heave one of the grenades I have with me over the lip and into the cover that the Riders are using for shelter. After the Penny incident, I made a point of capturing and autopsying a Bebe and we found out two useful facts. One, their power pack is in the left thigh and two, you can make a crude but powerful EMP grenade out of their transmitters.

The burst of magnetic charge goes off happily and a trio of confused humans stagger out into the open long enough to earn themselves hits from Neural stunners.

We belt our way across to out target, making little or no attempt at subtlety; they know where we are and they're coming.

"How come you've started seeing eye to eye with your dad all of a sudden?" I ask as Jim works to install the detonator system into the microwave power distributor.

"You're just as bad as he is, abandoning those who care about you!"

"My, my, someone has a dim view of me. It's not like I had much choice on the kidnapping thing, nor the artificial realities bit. You do realise that the only reason I escaped at all was because Shego got distracted while she was riding me and I was able to knock her cold when she collapsed post coitus?"

"Dude, what you do with your mortal enemies is your business."

"Like what you chose to do in the recruits barracks? You know that those are monitored areas in case we have synthetic issues, yet you still had to get your Jones off without telling Wade. Your best friend, man."

"Just because I'm gay, it doesn't mean that I'm any less of a man than you are, Stoppable!"

"Listen to yourself, you sound like a bad feminist. I'm saying what makes you less of a man is that you messed around in a place you knew you'd get caught by your friend, who probably had mixed feelings about you that he was afraid of and still haven't apologised for it. I'm not one for names, but I'm trying to find an insulting word for you right now. Somehow, faggot really doesn't cover it."

"You couldn't protect Kim, why should I worry about you?"

"You forget, I killed to save Yori, fought Drakken's legions to save Bonnie and let your mother go to New York because she thought it was the right thing to do. And before you accuse me of anything, I didn't take advantage. She knew what she was doing, even if her reasons really don't make any sense to us sane people."

"Why you!" seems I've finally touched that nerve. He hurls himself at me and knocks me down into the storm drain that we were running along. I instantly right myself and land on my feet.

"Grow a pair, Jim. In a couple of days, I'm going to get rid of that stuffed shirt synthetic that's buggering up the work we've done these last few years. I want you on side and if you can't snap out of this and come back to the family, well then you're just as much of a threat as he is."

"You treat me like this because I'm gay!"

"Pathetic. I treat you like this because you're pathetic. Hiding behind that catch all excuse like a child in a fort. This may be the mid-west but frankly, I don't care whose orifices you poke. I just want you to be a man, apologise to Wade and get your friendship back. You know that he brought me back here in the first place because trying to look after you and Tim and Anne was too much for him. He grew up enough to try to take care of you two despite his agoraphobia and the fact that you're both older. Grow a pair of balls and we'll talk. Until then, get out of my sight."

I take off into the sky, hoping that my words will have the desired effect and that Jim has a strong enough masculine aspect to rise to the challenge; not because he's gay but because he's been so damn petty recently.

* * *

"You, my friend, are like the missing link."

"Why do you say that Laddie?"

"The missing link between man and woman, Duff! The only reason I ever believed it was your habit of not wearing underwear in high winds."

"You have a smart tongue, lad. Now, are you here to buy shoes or are you going to ask me to help you mangle that smug little Asian fellow?"

"You are a wise man, Duff Killigan. I seek your skill with a golfclub, though I am tempted by these fellows," I trail off, amazed by the pair of Allstars stood on his shelf. Such shoes have become rare since the chipping and people stopped being so fashion conscious.

"They are pretty shoes. Why are you asking an old villain like me for help though? The world's most dangerous golfer isn't exactly the world's most obvious choice of sidekick for you."

"Sidekick? Me? Not likely, Duff. I need backup and you have more stopping power than anyone else I can think of. I'm guessing you have spiked balls that stick to synthetics, right?"

"Yes, laddie, I wouldn't be much use without them, would I?"

"Good, now here's the plan."

* * *

"Hello, William," I say in the voice of Eric the tormentor as I step from the shadows.

"Why have you summoned me here? I am not due to report for another three days and one of the rebels may note my absence."

"William, you should learn to be more perceptive."

"What do you mean?"

I step forward into the narrow shaft of light that graced the tumbledown piece of warehouse space at this time of night. Reaching up to the edges of the cloak I'm wearing, I throw the hood back, revealing a huge, toothy grin that couldn't be mistaken for any example of Hotness in the galaxy.

"We already know everything, dude," I finish in Eric's voice, much to his evident horror.

The warehouse explodes into motion.

* * *

Author's Note: Ever worried that you might offend people with what you write? I'm getting that feeling right now. Ah well, if people want to be offended, that's their business i guess. 


	56. Chapter 55

The kitchen, any kitchen is like my happy place. Immortal taught me to find and harness the place in my mind where no negative thoughts ever penetrated, other than the grim thought that I might have to leave, eventually, but not right now. In his mind, it's a cave, with dappled water patterns casting beautiful blue light on the roof; in mine, it's a busy kitchen with people bustling around me and a soufflé in the oven. I don't know why, but then again, I always feel pretty much untouchable when I'm doing a souffle; no-one ever dares distract you.

I'm in the process of making a reduction from a bottle of nasty California wine I got at the market to baste the beef with when a pretty young man and an anxious looking Josh come in from the hall. Wade's been trying to explain why there's bad blood between us but I'm lost as it stands.

"Welcome back Joshua! I think I heard Tara stirring upstairs, why don't you head on up and tell her to dress for company. Tell her no sweats, no matter how good I may think her bum looks in them, okay?" I smile at him, feeling like there's nothing can harm me.

He pauses for a second then nods and heads upstairs.

I'm left alone in a room full of sharp knives with a guy I apparently don't trust. Great.

"Jamie, before you say anything, I want it clear that I'm not entirely sure why I apparently don't like you. Maybe I'm having adrenaline withdrawl symptoms but ever since I booked a guy called Babyshoes this morning, I've been living through one long brain-fart. I can't seem to remember anything much, except that I'm good at my job and I love Tara."

I sigh a little

"I've had a long day and she thinks that something will happen between me and my ex because Hobble sent me and Janice up there to put out a brushfire on the Possible ranch."

He regards me like a card shark looks at a novice on a winning streak.

"Look, I don't know what you're trying to pull, but feigning insanity and making food is not going to make me sorry for the whole Janice thing. You can just go back to your little high horse, Stoppable."

"And here's me trying to be friendly. Look, shut up, come over here and peel those shallots for me and you can explain exactly how this feud started, including whatever you did to Janice that you don't feel you should be apologising about." I keep smiling, pointing him to the opposite side of the side of the worktable.

After a moment, he comes over, still looking suspicious and begins to peel the little onions.

Some minutes later, he's wrapping up a longwinded story that boils down to this; he stole Janice's Boyfriend. Then broke his heart. Then went back to Josh, who was none the wiser.

I can honestly say that with his sense of Du like self assuredness, I can't presently find a good point in the little twerp, save for a wickedly sassy sense of humour. By the time Tara comes down and stands gobsmacked in the doorway, we're laughing about lame jokes and meat related double-entendres with glasses of wine in our hands.

"What's going on? Ron, what's gotten into you, inviting Jamie over for dinner?" she asks from the doorway, leaning slightly against it doorframe. In one brief moment, all the mental preparation I put in before this moment comes crashing down around me. I can't believe how much I missed her…

I surge forward, taking her slim frame and sweeping her up in my arms. She smells so good that I find myself burying my face into the nape of her neck and holding on for dear life. Hot tears begin to shake into the corners of my eyes, I can't believe that I'm getting another chance to se her.

"Whoa, soldier, what's wrong? Ronnie, what's the matter?" she asks me in a soft voice, full of concern. I pull back and stare into her eyes.

"Oh, it's nothing, I just missed you, is all."

I can't help but notice how beautiful she is, her increased age making her brilliant blue eyes look all the more intense, framed as they are by a darker, dirtier shade of blonde that's now closer to my own. I haven't seen Tara in four years, since she went missing. Just after the chipping began, she vanished without a trace and the only time I've seen her since is in the form of synthetics.

With my fingers buckled, I run my nails backwards along the side of her jaw, bringing the heel of my hand into contact with her cheek as gently as physically possible. Her eyes flutter slightly under my touch and I know that I'm doing good. Her pretty smile of happiness earns her a gently, tender kiss, our lips barely meeting. It begs the question what life would have been like if she had been around.

"Wow," she breathes after a moment, "guess I shouldn't have been worried about Kim, eh?"

"Compared to seeing you again?" I smile, thick feelings of satisfaction washing through me.

"You two Straights mind stopping with the disgusting stuff?" Jamie throws in after a few wonderful moments. The jerk is insulting his hosts for being in love? Has he no redeeming features?

"Honey, I know he's your best friend's partner, but can I hurt the maggot?"

"Can't you smell the tears on my collar?" she asks in a faint whisper, "They're Josh's. He's cheating on him again."

"So that's a yes?"

"Just like I did to Bonnie, senior year."

I pause for a few moments before Wade decides that it's time to pipe up.

"She broke her nose for trying to blackmail you into dumping Tara. It was quite spectacular and made the local as well as school newspapers. 'Local teen fights for love', made a great angle."

I turn around very, very slowly, still holding Tara's hand losely and smile happily for a moment.

"Booyah," I breath and slam a perfectly executed Great Monkey strike into the bridge of his nose. I turn back to Tara after a moment, "You want to dump him or should I?"

"Actually, I think we can kill two birds with one stone," she replies, looking down at the unconscious philanderer and smiling a little. "Josh! Would you come down here for a second?" she yells out through the door, standing on one foot and pointing the other in that adorable little way of hers.

Mankey emerges after a few seconds and catches sight of the sprawled body on the floor.

"What the hell happened?" he asks me with a look of panic in his eyes, just as I'm about to take a sip from my glass of wine.

"I told Ronnie that he's been cheating on you. I'm sorry, Josh."

"You did this for me Ron? Why? I thought you didn't like me…"

"That wasn't just for you, Joshua. He was dancing on my last nerve. Just one question, how the hell did you ever date Kim?"

One double take later, he looks back at me.

"What brought that on and what's that got to do with thumping my cheating beau?"

"Oh, nothing. It's just that cheating vexes me so…" I reply before I break into a vicious grin.

"Well, as I've said before, don't feel bad about it, she cheated on me too. And that pretty medic fellow too."

"Well, enough of this, where do you want me to dump him?" I ask brightly.

"Well, we don't have a shared apartment so you could dump him about anywhere you like. Are you sure that you aren't going to get into trouble for this, Ron? He's a cop too…"

"Well, once I dump him, it'll be two cops' word against one's so I suspect nothing will come of it."

"You won't be dumping him anywhere, Ron. I'll do it."

"Why Tara?" askes Josh with a confused look.

"I may not be Kim but I'd prefer having Ron's skills in the kitchen."

We both stare at her for a second and she smiles her dizzy smile at us.

"What? It smells great!"

* * *

After a wonderful evening of conversation and damn fine food, if I do say so myself, we set Josh up with the guest room and retire to bed. Ours is a simple home, with simple tastes and relatively poor furnishings but we've got it made up the way I would have wanted it if I had made the decisions. Everything is simple and well made, blocky and mostly unadorned. We have no ornaments other than a fistful of throws on our threadbare furniture and a selection of proud photographs of us at the academy and on a whole spread of vacations in places that scream 'activities' rather than 'sights'.

Looking across at her as she sits next to me with a trashy novel in her hands, I think of something stupid and can't help but chuckle quietly to myself.

"What?" she asks over the top of the book.

"Nothing."

"Ronald Eugene Stoppable, we've been together for nigh on five years. I know when you're having a silly minute. What is it?"

"Why does it bother you?"

"Because it's always good. Now what is it?"

"Weeeell, I was just thinking of the first time you kissed me."

"What, after that time at that camp?"

"No, silly, that wasn't the first time. You mentioning Bonnie made me think of it just now."

"When was…oh my God…" she mutters, dropping her book and covering her mouth with her hands.

"You were such a pretty twelve year old," I grin at her before I grab her sides with my strong fingers and begin moving the skin. In moments she's laughing hard and trying to stop me tickling her, or mount a counterattack, I'm not really sure.

We tickle and we tumble and we play until we begin kissing and petting and playing.

After a few moments, I pull back with a horrible realisation; this Tara is real. She has a soul.

It's the real Tara and I couldn't be happier, though I'm going to have to puzzle this one out.

We go back to our play and I begin to think of the first kiss we ever shared. It still amuses me to marry the girl I kissed like that.

Bonnie made her kiss the geekiest weirdo in our grade as part of her hazing for the cheer squad. Best. Hazing. Ever.

* * *

For the first night in oh so many, I dream a thousand sweet dreams and wake truly rested and happy. No visions of Kim, no screaming impotently trying to catch her hand, no cold sweat.

The alarm goes off and I realise that this is the first time that I've actually been woken by such a thing in five whole years. In the temple, it was chanting to which I rose, on the mountain, it was the sun; with the rebels, I rose with the dreams and in the other artificial realities, I woke before the alarms. Here, fore some reason, I feel completely safe.

Wait, there's movement.

"Morning!" a fine squeak cuts out in front of my face. My eyes snap open and are greeted by a small pink face with huge teeth, tiny eyes and a newspaper held in front of its body.

"Rufus?" I ask shocked.

"Hi!"

I take the newspaper and sit up, my shifting weight causing Tara to stir. She looks wonderful with the fine sheen of sweat making the now not so clean white sheet cling in all the right places.

"I guess you didn't die of deadly dates in this world…" I say to Rufus quietly.

"Nope, he didn't. That said, you never went to Israel, became a mercenary, killed any extremists or became a ninja. Nor, strictly speaking, did you give up hero work. Still, you've had an active and dangerous life in this world and the rewards have been very blonde…"

"Good morning Wade. Your tact and timing are awesome. I know you think white girls are easy but would you mind not looking at my wife like that," I say looking up at him.

"Better than looking at you and your sexy sexy scars, Ron," he laughs back at me.

"Great, just scat for now, I'm going to go make breakfast for me and this beauty."

He fades away like the Cheshire Cat, leaving behind his gleaming smile, which n turn fades away.

Minutes later, I return with hot tea and a handful of toasted bagels, though I have no idea what she likes on them. I brought three kinds of jam, peanut butter and something called gentleman's relish which I've heard of but never actually seen.

"Mmmm, what time is it?" Tara asks from the bed, running her fingers through her hair and stretching out, meanwhile curling her legs up in a way that causes a brushing feeling on the inside of my robe.

"That would be about six fifteen or breakfast time for the most bon-diggety babe in any universe, whichever you prefer."

"Any universe? What's that all about, baby?"

"Oh, nothing…anyway, bagels and your choice of topping plus tea, though I made it how I like it; bricklayer strength."

"You always have it watery, Ronnie. Wait," she stops as I take off the robe again, revealing my right shoulder, "where the hell did that tattoo come from?"

"Crud, this is where I always slip up. Before you freak, I am Ron, I'm not some kind of shapeshifter. I'm not a synthetic or anything like that. I think I know someone who could explain better than I ever could though. Wade," I call out at the ceiling, as if that would make him hear me more easily, "I need you to do some explaining."

After a few moments Wade fades into my vision and seeing this Tara screams in panic. It's not very often that you have a fully dressed human materialise in your room while you're naked. That said, I doubt Bonnie would be that phased by something like this after having spent so long with me.

"What the F…"

"Tara, language. Wade, get the plot exposition going, we need to shower and go to work in the next hour and a half."

"Right, Tara, I'm sorry about this, for some reason, despite Ron's shape changing abilities, he can't hide his tattoo. He's revealed himself as being alien to three other realities with that inability so far, including the first, where he and Kim were married, eventually in one where he abandoned her for her safety which led to a sequence of events where she ended up attempting to marry a sociopath and in a third where he was apparently a vampire."

"You're expecting me to believe that my Ron has been replaced by one from another reality like that crappy show he makes me watch on Wednesdays?"

"First," I cut in, "Quantum Leap is an absolute classic and second, we are in asking, not expecting you to believe what we're telling you."

"Ron was captured in our reality by Drakken's forces in an attempt to remove his leadership from the rebellion. Since he vanished, we've been having a lot of problems; it took me three months just to find him and we've been trying to escape this for another four."

"Rebellion? Why are you leading a rebellion?" Tara asks looking increasingly annoyed.

"After Kim died in Tokyo trying to save Nakasumi-san from Shego before the Diablo incident, Drakken took over, mostly because Kim was the key trigger for his defeat. Sad as it is, Ron just didn't have the beans to successfully save the world as it was. He left and trained as a mystic warrior, then I convinced him to come back and become the leader of the rebellion."

"And what about Ron and I?"

"Well Tara," I say regretfully, "that's the thing. I haven't seen you for a long, long time. You vanished during Drakken's mind control chipping program and the only time I've seen you since is in the eyes of synthetic warriors that bear your face. Didn't realise how much I missed you until I saw you yesterday…"

"You missed me? Didn't we date or anything?"

"In our world, Ron never asked Kim out after the moodulator thing and so she never cheated on him. In all honesty, I don't know of our world would have played out the way this one did but regardless, but when you and Mankey broke up, Ron never paid any heed to it and you took up with Jason Morgan, the basket ball star. Our world took a very different turn and Ron specifically risking his life and taking that scar made Bonnie reconsider her self worth and eventually become a good person, Ron's second in command and partner for a while."

Sheepishly, I turn around to show her the disintegrator burn on my back from the rescue.

"So you took advantage of me being in the dark about this?" she demands, horror and betrayal souring the memory of a very nice night spent together to poison.

"No. God no! Let me try to explain. Erm…Wade, scan her quantum signature for me. First thing to realise is that these realities are, er, something other than our own and being in effect small intrusions of other possibilities into our world, they're somehow wrong to my mystical senses. The other Kims have been real, along with the most important characters in those realities but Drakken was forced to populate the people who weren't significant to me with synthetics, something I keep sensing.

"The thing is, that these copies of real people are just that from the point of view of our reality and thus don't have a certain type of essence that normal people have. Souls for want of a better word. Thus I never slept with any of the Kims in the other worlds because they seemed 'wrong' to me, they had no souls because the real Kim is dead in our world."

"So I don't have a soul and my world isn't real. Why is this supposed to make me feel better, Ron?"

"That's just the thing, you do have a soul, a Hsien. You are the real Tara, at least I think so."

"He's right Tara," Wade offers from behind me. I've sat down onto the bed and I now have my back to him, blocking his vision so she doesn't have to feel so uncomfortable. "You do have the same quantum signature as Ron, you are from our world. I'm not sure how long this world has existed but I think you may have had your memory reconstructed and have been here some time."

"I'm from another world? That still doesn't explain you pretending to be my Ron and making love to me last night," she says, at first with great hostility which sort of fades into a mild dreaminess by the end of the statement.

"I'm sorry, Tara, but it was so overwhelming to see you again and you're so wonderful to me that it was pretty much love at first sight. I now it sounds lame, but I'm still Ron and I've never been any good at lying to you."

"Now that we've broached the subject, you want me to explain what's going to happen with Kim, Ron?"

"No Wade, I think we need to deal with this as we go."

"Going to happen? You know the future?"

"The behaviour of all of the characters here is predicted by the computer that created the world. The only things that make the changes here are Ron's actions at various points of the simulated timeline."

"The last one had me as a serial killing sociopath thanks to mum mother being harsher with me after Wannaweep and Kim not wanting to speak to me. I went mad and cabalistic, turned Kim into the same and became sort of ruler of the world…not good at all," I shudder at the mere memory and the difficult I had keeping the soulless, insane bitch from fucking me. I really can't think of another word to describe what she was planning.

"I want an outline of this, Wade, even if he doesn't."

"According to destiny, the computer that runs these universes, Kim is going to start divorcing her husband, who'll finally hit her, Ron will save her and things get hazy from there."

"What do you mean, hazy?"

"I've replaced the basic Ron algorithms with a slightly different pattern so it can't predict my actions to one hundred percent accuracy. What would have happened if I hadn't shifted in?"

"Ron would have been a damn good friend to her and the fact that you'd have been treating him worse and worse because of your fear of Possible would have driven him into her arms, Tara. He still trusts that she doesn't want to hurt him and she uses this to her advantage. This Kim Possible is a lot more manipulative and mistrusting of men than in other worlds we've been to and she doesn't realise that it's the cheating that causes the collapses in trust. In essence, it's her fault."

I sense that thanks to this, this wonderful world is going to get a lot more complicated.

* * *

Author's Note: Sucks to have limitations on your powers, eh Ron? Finally starting to get my lead built back up again so I should be able to get back to posting soon (I always work 5 chapters ahead and I used up some of my buffer when i posted before Hong Kong). 


	57. Chapter 56

"You might as well give in to the inevitable Mr Stoppable," Du chimes in that condescending voice of his as I block one of his smooth combination strikes. Basic Wing Chun but delivered with a great deal of strength and a mastery of the inch-punch that I never saw Kim display.

"What's that then, William?" I ask, returning the favour, clipping his left flank, "that you're never going to shut up?"

"Mr Stoppable, you wound me," he replies with a sardonic gleam in his eye and a tilt headed expression that makes me feel like he knows something I don't. "I was referring to you imminent demise."

I launch into the most obscure offensive Kata I can think of in order to buy myself a moment to think. I don't have one style so I at least have an advantage on paper against Du, plus he's a robot. Thus far, he's demonstrated mastery or at least solid understanding of Wing Chun, Karate, Jeet-Kun-Do, Tae-Kwon-Do, Judo and what seems like Sambo so he doesn't have any particular style weaknesses for me to exploit.

He's almost as fast as I am and though I can go faster by using my powers, I wouldn't be surprised if he could too. I guess I'll just have to wound him.

Internal styles are reactionary and he's likely to see that as fear so it's a good place to start.

He reacts to my closed stance with a flurry strike directed at both my nose and plexus. I flow back into the fishing posture of the Yang style and cast my net, deflecting both fists and allowing me to carry him off his feet and onto his back. He rolls deftly and parries the karate hammer punch I throw at his groin with a shin block.

He's added Mui-Thai to the list now. No, the stance is wrong, must have been Sambo.

"You seem distracted, Mr Stoppable," he says amiably, or at least as amiably as someone who thinks that you're an insignificant nothing can muster, "what are you thinking, I wonder? Do you think that you can get the upper hand on me in conventional combat? Hmmm?"

He allows me to fall back a step and adjusts his posture into a textbook receiving stance from Crane style. Great. Kung Fu.

He must have noticed my expression shift.

"Oh, I do believe I understand now. You're searching for a stylistic gap to try to exploit. Believe me, Mr Stoppable, you won't find one. I'm fully versed in more than twenty martial arts, real ones, not the assumptions that Possible was."

"William, I know Kim was full of shit sometimes but you mind not talking smack about her?" I ask in a way carefully aimed to make me seem vulnerable.

"Mr Stoppable, amenable though I am, why would I pass up the opportunity to undermine you when it works so well?"

He chooses that moment to surge out of his stance and come crashing forward. He makes the mistake of using a hard punch, something that I punish instantly by deflecting it left and launching into a tactic called the serpent coils. He moves to counter it and I follow through with my original intention, stamping down hard onto his bound arm. I feel bones buckle under my boot but I'm under no illusions what's coming next.

* * *

Bonnie twists lightly on her toes and delivers a needle kick to the side of a young girl's head. There's a mild crunching noise and the young rebel collapses clutching her eye. A tinkle of sobbing fills the air but Bonnie has no time for concern. Fortunately the training I gave her and the fact that I've spent the last two years sneaking up on her and tickling her pay off.

She shifts into a ballet stance that I've never learned the name of; up on one toe with her back parallel to the ground and her other foot arched behind her in a nearly horizontal position. That foot lashed into the outside of the other girl's wrist, causing her to drop the plasma pistol.

The girl parries a straight punch but realises too late that there's a knife in Bonnie's hand. She twists her hand around as she drags it back into a ready position, slitting a long gash down the girl's forearm.

Thick, viscous green gunk begins to cascade onto the floor, then abruptly stops and hear Bonnie curse like a sailor at the discovery that she's fighting a pair of Mark II synthetics.

* * *

Tim tries to break through the lines by burst firing on the run but there seems to be little plasma finding its mark. Experimental weapons or not, he's still capped in his ability to keep that up. Right now, I bet he's cursing the fact that he followed his brother in refusing the weapons training I offered them in the early days. Jim was just being stubborn because I kept telling him to be honest about being gay. In all fairness, I felt that his girlfriend at the time deserved to know.

Whipping his rifle around like a blade, Tim manages to knock a synthetic's head out of alignment and downs one of the humans who's running to help their glorious leader. How Du managed to inspire this much devotion, I'll never know.

He continues to hammer through the tightly packed mix of rebels and faux-rebels that are pouring through the main entrance, breaking them into confusion. It looks like he's been taking lessons from the Lodden school of combat; be bigger than your opponent and disregard their ability to hit you. Can't comment though, it seems to be working!

* * *

There's still no sign of Jim or Wade, though I suspect that the latter has hooked up with the relief I lined up. We really need that Disruption Detonator.

* * *

The sickeningly traditional _rik-tik-pop_ noise that comes with a synthetic reseating their fake bones comes from Du as he carefully rearranges the damaged parts. I know he's some breed of synthetic because if he were working with a Bebe type processor then he'd be less able to react to changes with originality. Sounds like a minor thing but even the most advanced computer program would have been fairly obvious to myself or anyone I trained to actually listen.

"You can't beat me, Mr Stoppable. I have fighting skills that are easily in excess of yours and I have all of your powers, as do the other ten units in my series which, by the way, have been dispatched and are on their way here as we speak."

"All of my powers, eh?" I pop the question as I throw a pair of inefficient haymaker type punches that he blocks without much effort and I trap his arms as he tries to counter attack. Keeping his arms locked with mine, I grow another pair in an eye blink and shatter what passes for his mandible bone between my fists.

He staggers back and holds himself still, I assume to allow his cybertronic self repair system to kick in and repair that mandible. If you took the time to create a carbon copy of Du, you'd probably take the time to integrate the same habit of undermining the confidence of those around him. I have maybe three seconds to act so I gather as much energy as I can from my mostly closed chakras and slam forward into a punch that could blast concrete to powder or bend steel.

It never makes contact. In my slightly accelerated state, I see an event horizon of blue energy emanating from a number of point on his chest and boiling into a shield. My fist makes contact about an inch from his body but the rest of the shield expands around this point until the outer shield strikes my in the shoulder and begins to drive me back. The magnokinetics of the shield finally catch up with me and my momentum is transferred back into me, catapulting me across the warehouse and through a heavy concrete stanchion.

As I flew, I managed to go over the energy release in my mind. There were five emitters in a star pattern that were located underneath his synthetic flesh units. The field tore away those synthetic parts as it snapped outwards, leaving me damp with his false blood and leaving his metal body stood naked and gleaming in the florescent lights.

Dazed, I pick my blonde ass up and wish for the umpteenth time that I was still a sidekick. Back then, the big hitters didn't bother with me much, hence my impressive rate of lair destruction. Trying to put this out of mind, I crack open the store of rage I've been holding back and use it to smother the pain of throwing my arm out to the side and resetting my half dozen dislocations.

"Force fields, Mr Stoppable. Just like the one that you demonstrated in combat with Clone-001 in scenario 001," Du says as he strides towards me, reaching down to grab the back of my hair, dragging me up so that I'm looking him in the eyes. "I've managed to break you in one simple move, Mr Stoppable. Isn't that pathetic."

With those kind words, he slams his metal fist down at me and discovers that he's not the only one capable of bringing a force field to bear. The iron struts of his hand give way slightly under the lashing forces that compose my psychic egg and his blow bounces clear. I wink slightly to open my tear duct and the single rod of Lotus metal flies free, shattering one of his force-field generators.

Grunting with disapproval, he jerks away without releasing his hand, tearing a whole chunk of my cowlick clean off.

"Dude! Don't you dare fuck with my essential Ron-ness!"

The gesture seems like a reflexive gesture of petulance from elsewhere but in truth, It's me unleashing one of my atomically sharp lotus strands and severing his arm at the elbow.

"Ah yes, the insane belief that you are in some way desirable to the opposite sex," he mutters, holding his severed elbow up as if watching his fingers wiggle as a hazy collection of pieces begin to form a pair of bones, then an agglomeration of smaller bones as he reconstituted his hand and wrist, then a smattering of magnetic servos and finally a skin of metallic plates. It's a grimly fascinating thing to watch.

"As you can see," he continues in his condescending tones, "I designed using engineering that was using in the short lived Centurion project."

"Oh crap," I manage, realising what this means at about the same moment he brings the repulsor cannon that just regrew with his arm to bear on me. I'm catapulted back again, crushing through rubble and cutting a swathe across the floor before I manage to tense my ass cheeks and flip onto my feet. My clothing is tattered and I'm bleeding from dozens of cuts.

"Face it Mr Stoppable, you just don't have the facility to stop me," he boasts casually as a pair of shoulder mounted plasma cannons emerge and begin firing.

* * *

The warehouse has around fifty to a hundred critters inside it now, ranging from humans, mostly rookies in Du's service, through synthetics who came surging out of the rebellion tunnels to a collection of riders that came charging in from the street. This would be a perfect time for them to call in a unit of Bigggrins and raze the whole building, but that would put tarnish on Drakken's public image as a gentle patron rather than a clinical oppressor.

Things do not look badical at the moment, people.

* * *

Bonnie manages to breach one of the girls that she's fighting, cutting a gash too wide and irregular for her self repair mechanisms to cope with. She collapses to goo like a good little synthetic but the second basically leaps onto her knife and twists it free from her hand. It seems that Mark II units are smarter than I gave them credit in the past.

A smooth trip brings Bonnie to the ground with admirable haste and the synthetic rams her foot into Bonnie's armpit while stretching her arm up towards her body. She smirks with stomach turning glee and her face begins to shift and distort.

Bonnie lies beneath her captor, stony faced as Drakken begins to inform her of the punishments that she'll suffer if he's not satisfied with her performance as part of his harem.

In fairness, there's got to be some perk to taking over the world and being able to manipulate the entire population's emotions…

* * *

I watch in horror as Tim soaks a trio of Nueral stunner hits, two from synthetics and a third from a misled child in rebel's clothing. He falls and is swarmed upon by small robots that seem to be Diablos that poured from the fallen carcass of one of his victims.

* * *

William stands over my fallen body, a look of insane self-satisfaction painted on his metallic facsimile face. Now, bereft of his fleshy disguise, he looks just like how the real Du would have if he wore a Centurion suit and auditioned for the role of the Tin Woodsman.

Now, with twin plasma cannons trained on my head and a blade that seems to be composed of a forcefield pressed against my chest, he has me cornered and he knows it.

"As you can see, Mr Stoppable, I was indeed prepared for every one of your mystical gifts and everything that your meagre combat skills and intellect was able to throw at me. I have won and proven that Possible's faith was once again misplaced in trusting you."

"William, you seem to have failed to consider one very important possibility."

"What would that be, Mr Stoppable?"

"You never asked why I haven't multiplied. I did it enough times in those false realities for you to get a good measure of it."

"I haven't given you the chance to use the power. It requires an invocation to be chanted."

"Yes it does. You have, however, made one fatal assumption…"

"And what would that be, Mr Stoppable?" he asks in a way that tells me that I'm obviously bluffing and far too stupid to have any advantage over him.

"You assumed that I was the real me," I reply slowly.

I have about half a second to watch his expression change to one of absolute horror before the side of his head bursts like a balloon hitting the candles on a birthday cake.

* * *

Author's Note: Phew, another chapter on the net, holy crap! Sorry it took so long. I'm having a lot of trouble with student housing at the moment so i have a lot of negative emotions hammering around at the moment; I'm not sure how this'll effect my writing for the next while. 


	58. Chapter 57

Light.

Really bright light.

Really, insanely bright light.

The kind of light that you see in movies just before the poor bastard gets anal probed.

Static.

White noise.

_Oh,_ I think, _I've been killed again._

Funny, I don't remember it specifically. I usually do.

Last thing I remember was…

Oh, God, they better not have done anything to Tara.

The world beyond the looking glass begins to swim into focus after what seems like an age. I'm in a dungeon just like the one I was trapped in before this madness began. One wall is made of mirror and the other holds a heavy door that I could reduce to a cloud of splinters with ease. Or at least I could if I could get my hands free. And for some reason, none of my powers seem to work here. Just like the last holding pen they had me in.

In fairness, it would be a safe bet that this is the same one.

Logically, they didn't know how to limit my powers when they captured me in the first place so there must be something coincidental about this place that makes it impossible for me to use my powers. The simplest answer would be that they built this place out of some kind of temple building. Or this was already here, build into a temple building.

Mosque hiding a militant cleric? Synagogue mustering equipment for one of the Israeli paramilitaries? Some kind of Vatican Templar holdings? In fairness, the latter seems like the most annoyingly likely possibility.

If it is, my escape is going to be difficult. The blessings on this building will reassert themselves with worrying quickness so I'll only have the ability to use my gifts during the actual desanctifying act itself.

Great. I have to figure out a way of defiling this holy place with either innocent blood, something that's in pretty short supply in situations where people take me prisoner or an unclean act. As the French like to say, _le petit mort._ Well, strictly speaking semen…

* * *

I have one power that works no matter whether I'm on holy ground or not. It isn't powered by Sun's abilities but is completely my own. While my enemies have yet to emerge, I slip into the Dreaming an search out one of the many allies I've made out there. Dreamer would be the best but there are others who wander the Dreamtime whom I have a working relationship with.

The patterns turn to darkness as I let go of reality and the darkness turns to light as I let go of letting go.

Colours begin to fade into view, chasing lines on the vertical changing into the uprights of trees. Dreamer is the most useful ally I could seek but the one I'm most likely to find is someone else. He's always in the same region of the Dreaming, in the snowcapped valleys that border on the plains of Wysh. Don't blame me for the choice of names. Something to do with seeing your heart's desire when you wander through those grassy vistas.

I begin to trudge across the loss and pain that makes up the permafrost here, feeling like I'm in the deepest lock of a Canadian winter. This is his place and I can scarcely alter it one iota. The trees hang softly around me, maple and birch and pine, each different but each bound by driven snow on one side and scoured by the wind. I turn my face as a fresh gush hacks at my cheeks with bitter crystals and catch sight of one of the markers that let you know that he's nearby.

Carrious.

Apparently, it's some kind of mental manifestation of his conscience. Like a guardian angel or something, but all I see is a dirty brown crow. A carrion crow I'm told; common enough in Europe and the west of Asia. Staring back at me with unsettlingly deep eyes, I get the feeling that that crow represents more than most things you find wandering the Dreaming.

"Morning Carrious."

The bird just stares at me, tipping its head so that it can look at me despite the fact that its eyes are on the sides of its head.

"Is he here? I'm in need of his services again."

"You're always in the need of my services, Ron, you just don't admit it as often as you should."

"There are reasons for that," I reply, without turning around. I find the man slightly disturbing because he's so much like me and yet so different.

"Pride is the only thing holding you back. It isn't as if I ever ask anyone for anything."

"Why is that?" I ask, finally voicing the question that's been bothering me since I met him. The greatest thinker on the forces of the Dreaming and he chooses to live in the roughest part of the mind's eye. He never asks anything, save for your story and that you spend some time in his cabin, keeping him company, something that you can always afford to do as time has no meaning here.

"Ron, why would I make demands on someone who was skilled enough to find me and desperate enough to make the journey? It's not as if I don't ask for everything I want anyway."

"You only ever ask for a story and some time spent with you in your cabin."

"What more can a man adrift in the forests of grief ask for than company. What is it that I can do for you Ron?"

I choose that moment to finally turn to look at him. Behind a thick beard etched with snow is a deeply set smile and a broad nose similar to my own. He's definitely also touched with Polish ancestry. His eyes seem older than any man's should be, almost black in this light, but framed close to the pupil with a fierce slate colour. In our honed states, he has the same build as me but I can never be sure which age I'm dealing with. Versions of him can be found in this region most of the time but they come from all over his natural life, he has no continuity and yet remembers every inch of the Dreaming as if it were his only home.

"I need you to carry a message for me. I'm not skilled enough to cross timelines in the Dreaming and I need to get a message to someone on the outside. Either Dreamer or another Paragon or Wade Lodden."

"Ron, I can find them. Most of them wander through here from time to time and since his hair went white, I've been seeing a lot of Wade."

"Why is that? The white hair and the anger?"

"Ron, you know better than to ask that. I'll answer but you won't like it."

"Never mind then."

"I believe there was a message you wanted delivered."

"Yes. I'm alive and I'm going to escape but I'm not sure where I am. And tell Wade thanks for me."

"Any particular time you'd like this delivered? I'm probably not current to your timeframe."

I told him the date. For the first time ever, he seems genuinely surprised.

"Then? That's just before you…oh right. I'm actually going to affect something in the real world…"

"Seems that way."

"I'll deliver your message. You make sure you come see me soon, at this point in the Dreamtime. I've finally found that answer you were seeking."

"Answer?"

He just smiles and shrugs.

"Either you asked long ago and forgot or haven't even asked me yet. Anyway, when you want the answer, she's here."

"She?" I ask as he walks away, moving smoothly across the sorrow symbolic snow without sinking into it. I'm still non-the-wiser as to what that's about.

* * *

I open my eyes as the door slides open on its hissing pneumatics. Chained as I am, I have no real ability to defend myself. I guess that's the downside of relying on Monkey style defensive techniques; no room to move, lots of time to die.

The shape that enters the room is a blur, moving with great speed. It's a Kim.

God damn it, I thought I'd left this all behind!

She hurls herself against me, sobbing and crying, holding me as if I were her only chance to avoid being drawn into a tornado.

"Ron, please help me! She's going to take me back in there and keep doing those things to me. You can't let her take me back, you can't…" she howls another fierce sob and holds on for dear life. Despite the mild creeping feeling that I always get with clones, this is Kim and I still care for her deeply. I slowly wrap my arms around her shoulders and begin to shush her as she struggles slightly under my touch.

"Oh, Kimmie! You can't hide in there. Stoppable's no fun, he won't look after you," that thick sassy midwestern accent grates on my nerves as I remember her tender mercies before I was thrown into their inventive prison.

"Ron…" Kim breathes with fear in her voice so strong that it creeps through my skin and into my blood, making it run cold. I can't imagine what it would take to make Kim so afraid. No, wait, I can. My blood runs colder than the forest of Grief's winds.

A sensuous silhouette appears in the light of the doorframe, casting a hazy shadow across us. I lock eyes with the point that I know hers fill.

"Hello, Ronnie, my beautiful little one," she says and I feel like I've been violated by the fondness and dare I contemplate, love in that voice. "It's a joy to see you, but I can't play with you right now. Now it's kimmie's turn."

"I'll take her place if it'll save her the torment, Shego, you know that," I say, hoping my eyes are nearly as hard as I hope.

"Ronnie, you know full well that's not how this works. I'm in the mood for a little Kimmie right now. You didn't get to enjoy listening to the screams of my last few playthings for nothing. Sometimes, you're resistance made you too much effort where Kimmie has that wonderful defiance that I get to break. You're far too lovely for me to get any real satisfaction from trying to break you."

"Shego," I say, standing and pulling my chained wrists back over Kim's head, nodding for her to get behind me, "you can come get her."

"Oh, Ronnie, you're so good to me," she smiles as if I'd shown up on her doorstep on valentines day with a bouquet of her favourite flowers; forget-me-nots and it pains me to know that.

She starts blasting and I manage to block the first shot with my manacles and the kinetic forces of her blasts grind them to powder. I leap forward and try to engage but I find myself caught by the neck, I assume betrayed by Kim and collapse to the floor.

As the pain begins, I mentally shrug and think my motto for the umpteenth time: Some days is just isn't worth being the worlds last, best hope.

* * *

Author's Note: Bet you thought I'd never get back to this point, eh? 


	59. Chapter 58

Laughter fills the air and it's my laughter. It's not my usual joyous laugher of friends and family, not my victorious laughter. Nor is it the vicious laughter that I was known to use when I was evil and calling myself Zorpox. This is maniacal laughter, piercing and powerful, gripped as I am by the joy of using the full extent of my powers.

I hand in the air, doing something that I'd hoped I wouldn't have to do. Behind me flee almost half a million Chinese and assorted Asian refugees, thousands of men, women and children, riven by fear and hunted by the hoard I face at this moment.

In an instant, I count forty eight remaining Diablos, twenty two Bigggrins, seventeen Funnybunnys and a slack handful of other constructs, accompanied by any number of low end synthodrone soldiers. There must be at least four hundred guns for each one of me arrayed against them but with God as my witness, I shall prevail.

The fine line of mes are strung through the air, thirty feet up, covering miles of the front. I'm at my limit. I couldn't multiply any further if I wanted to but there is one thing in my favour today. I have trinkets. One for each clone. Monty and the Paragons raided their closets and produced some wonders of a mystic nature for me to play with. Personally, I chose the amulet of the ghost legion. If Monty went mad trying to possess its power, it must be something special.

Plasma energy begins to dissipate against psychic eggs at various points in the line but I send the impulse shuddering through the lines to use the energy and absorb it. The lines continue to close. I can feel a dozen itches from my more passionate parts, pleading to be let off the least yet I deny them; they'll be free to strike soon enough.

Lightning begins to arc between some of me as I try to equalise the vast amounts of energy being absorbed into my collective consciousness. Still we hold, with nothing but the insane laughter of my deepest passions echoing around the field. He chose the most destructive single item we could find, Pah-Chien's original rake. The thing has a destructive power comparable to the lotus blade and he's going to be wielding both the lotus and a weapon that can resculpt mountains.

Still they draw closer, trying to shoot past us to kill or slow the refugees but finding their shots blocked by energy fields and lotus particles and sheer stubborn will. Some of me are becoming tired, straining under the weight of fire they are forced to absorb and growing spiritually gorged on the power that they hold in.

Still I wait.

Time moves so slowly for a while then, just as part of me is beginning to buckle under the strain, I breath the order.

"Make them pay."

* * *

I finally stop laughing as he gives the order and I go to work. I think that building a great fist of stone and crushing as many of them as possible will be a nice demonstration of the Rake's combat potential. as the stone takes form, I begin to cast tiny, reaving blades around, slitting synthetics and punching fine holes in Diablos.

The great fist begins to bear down into a orgy of destruction, smashing free hundreds of pounds of syntho-gel. I'm going to enjoy this day, even it there's nothing to take the lust that killing always breeds in me out on.

He has the cheek to call me his dark side, but watching as his display of power takes pace, I feel like I was cheated out of the gratuitously vicious weapon.

* * *

As I allow the power stored within me to flood out through the artefact, an uncountable number of whispy green spirits, barely recognisable as monkeys begin to surge forth and crash into the front lines.

Try as they will, the synthodrones cannot fight effectively against the ethereal things and begin to be shredded by hundreds or tiny claws on hundreds of tiny, angry fists, many of them wielding weapons of Lotus steel that I formed in the same thought.

Like a green wave striking a legion of warriors made of fine clay, they cause Drakken's warriors to collapse into oblivion, dissolving into as much unloved green mush. They continue onwards, taking on forms that increasingly reflect my rage and disgust at Drakken's actions here in China.

In my mind's eye, I watch as on synthodrone gazes in horror for a moment as a misty monkey hurls itself at it's face. The little beast clings there, blocking the drone's vision as a further pair of monkey's cut their way in, swimming through his viscera to cut their way out the other side.

A Bigggrin, normally a bastion of defence and insanely heavy firepower is struck like a fallen tree in a flood and as the weight of angry spiritual simian on it's front increases, it heaves further and further back until it topples slowly to be covered by the tide.

A small handful of the spirit beasts even take something of an initiative, forming more into mist and slipping smoothly into the cracks and cooling systems on a Diablo. They must have begun to corrupt its program because the thing takes on an increasingly monkey like tone and then collapses into sand as they find the correct piece of its essence to undermine.

* * *

All along the line, mystical doodads and know-whats are brought to bear. Huge scimitar blades of smoke are hurled through the ranks alongside great gusts of wind from the fan of the west wind.

Some of me are relying more closely on their Lotus and their own gifts than the artefacts they have and so tiny blades of mentally controlled steel hurtle around the confused and panicking masses of synthetics and batter their way through larger constructs.

Lances of lightning dance through the ranks, killing and boiling synthoplasm without remorse. By heaven if feels good to liberate my powers without tapping into Sun.

I am free and I can create and destroy as I see fit and though I would never violate my oath of freedom, I can see the attraction of trying to force the world to see that freedom is important through force of arms. Fortunately, I can also see that that would be a vain and futile waste of my time and oh so many lives.

* * *

Almost a mile behind me, on a ridge, stand a handful of people come to watch me work. The majority of the rebels are engaged in scouting defences and guiding and aiding the refugees but these few stand and watch with various feelings dancing through their minds.

Bonnie is praying, just like Tara beside her, that the man she has come to care for will come back to her uncorrupted by the power that he's using today. Each thought that they had seen the limits of my abilities and were confident that I would remain true but now they realise exactly what I'm capable of when pushed. It shakes both to the core.

Immortal, Arahat and Baxter, the leader of the British rebellion are engaged in a conference of hushed voices. They're wondering how they can turn the destruction that I'm wreaking to their advantage, to save the lives of those that Drakken has resorted to destroying because it's proven impossible to chip them.

Baxter has another thought that he doesn't voice. He wonders if I'll help him with Project: Grey, his master plan to create a haven from Drakken's forces until we can finally win this war. He hasn't asked me yet and I know nothing save what his emotions tell me.

Most likely I'll agree.

The most fearful of them, is Monty. Most of the trinkets are his. He knows how power can corrupt, how addictive it is. Even now, he feels its itch at the front of his mind, consuming him and pressing him to try to gain more. He worries that I'll become like him and even more that I'll forget myself and return the items to him, driving him deeper into his madness.

Wade is the final figure. Stony and silent, his anger boils and I can't work out why. He misses Monique and the knowledge that Natalie and Shella aren't his children, no matter how much he would wish is eating him up but there's something else in there and I have no idea how to get at it and find out what.

I don't have enough mind to devote to delving deeper so I return to my bloody work, praying that his conversations with our mutual friend in the Dreaming will prove helpful.

* * *

Author's Notes: Things are coming to a head! 


	60. Chapter 59

Even as the recoil of the micro-shotgun on my arm begins to ripple through my flesh, I've taken to wing. I know instinctively that I've blown his head clean off and that I'm damn impressive while I fly.

Magic has a large component of self-image that comes into play and until this moment, seeing through the eyes of a duplicate, my poor, bleeding self esteem, I never realised what mine was. I'm beginning to think that Saint rubbed off on me in more ways than I initially imagined.

In the instants before I leave the ground, the white silk scarf, a keepsake from Hirotaka when he went off to join Yori in Tokyo, billows out to my sides. I have no idea why I wear it, save to remember that I have friends. No that's not true; I wore it so that a few of my allies could recognise me as the real one.

No, that's a lie. I'm not the real one. I'm just the first one, the whole one. Does that really make me any more real then the others? Really? They have the same memories and the same emotions, just with a conditional shift. I shouldn't be worrying about this sort of semantics in combat.

The scarf billows into two narrow wings like the shoulder strokes portrayed on Hsien beings on ancient Chinese artefacts, each forged of fine wind-like gusts.

Ever seen the wind catch the edge of a snow flurry and bring a dance of crystals?

You've seen the first moment of my flight, before the fabric spreads down my shoulder blades, forming the neat sweeps of feather ridged flesh; towers of pure, blinding white that beat irregularly as I clear the ground and swoop down to where I'm needed.

I plant my feet smoothly onto the grit between my fallen self and William. I hear a slight awed gasp from my own self-esteem behind me. The strongest part of my self worth is amazed by my abilities and actions; it isn't every day that you realise that you amaze yourself.

I put that thought aside briefly as the synthetic readjusts himself. I watch in simple, fascinated disgust as his head twists back up into a normal position with a sequence of gristly pops and clicks. The whole process takes about three seconds and I can't bring myself to annihilate him while he's doing this.

A sequence of small metal plates begin to fold and rotate out of the sides of his exposed metal skull as his leathery steel exoskeleton begins to twist and buckle and draw together around the sides of the wound. After a few more seconds, his eye lights up in a dull red shade and his jaw sets and shifts.

"That, Mister Stoppable, was a mistake."

"No, letting you have the time to heal was the mistake. Entertaining though," I grin back at him and watch as his jaw twitches oddly because he's yet to fully restore his skull.

"I'll make you pay for your entertainments, Mister Stoppable," he replies, unflinching as one of those giant combined synthetics explodes violently on the other side of the warehouse. Incidentally, it explodes to a tune of, "Ahck, mah best kleets!" from nearby.

"That's cool," I smile as I flick out at blinding speed with a Lotus Jian.

The blade licks out and catches the side of his face as he reels, cutting a broad slice of his synthetic flesh from the surface. He takes flight, most likely as an application of gravitic technologies and swoops up across the floor and towards the rafters.

I take a brief moment to look back at my self esteem.

"Help Duff," I say before swinging my sword skyward and surging upward into the rafters after him in a neat superhero pose, two strands of spring morning white playing out behind me.

* * *

Knowing that I need more power and that I'm the most potent duplicate other than Passion, I need to assimilate a lesser variable. Knowing that there are lesser parts of you is a side effect of being a man's self esteem I suppose.

Searching through the gestalt that we form, I find a part of me that isn't doing anything. Hardly surprising; dumping your own fear of monkeys into a duplicate and hoping that it can cope autonomously seems kind of dumb on reflection. That said, it isn't as if there's any control possible over this process, it's like some deranged emotional version of Brownian motion.

One solid impulse brings him dashing over and a brief touch brings us back together. Best condition of the duplicates is a spiffy ability at the worse of times. I feel his fear press against me, like wading through knee deep waves at the beach but cold as the very devil and a few mental strides and I'm back on the beach's edge, still feeling the drag between my toes and the abrasion of the water on the sand, causing it to slip smoothly from beneath me.

Instantly, with that infusion of fear, I suddenly feel more whole. More like me in some ways. Regardless, Duff needs my help, apparently. Alone, he seems to be holding his own against a…

"William?"

"Mister Stoppable, you'd do better to look after the other you, Killigan here is as good as dead."

With that, Duff's putter slams into the side of his chest, ripping flesh and shattering metal like tortilla chips. The hardened Iridium plates that make up that faux ribcage shatter and he collapses like a rag doll. That horrible _clickety-clickety-clack _noise begins to sounds as his self repair system begins to slide portions of the rest of his exoskeleton around to repair the damage.

Right now, I'm really wishing that Iridium rusted. I'd also really like to know how the hell I, Ron Stoppable, know jack about science. Still, can't have everything. I guess years of working with Wade rubbed off on me slightly.

How is it that Immortal taught me to think about situations? No, wait, this was Arahat. Think about how things affect each other. The fragments on the floor haven't melted and flowed back into him so he's working with his own body mass here. That means that the more I cut off, the weaker his structure will get. He's happily defended himself against me at full speed without much difficulty but the moment he tried to give me smack talk, Duff got a blow in.

That means that I need to attack him from multiple directions simultaneously and break his structure piece by piece until he hasn't got enough to repair himself. Healing isn't much use when you have a specific cap.

Duff tries to strike him again but Du simply catches the haft of the energised putter as if there wasn't a chance in hell that Duff could have hit him. I begin to accelerate and strike out at him.

He tries to wrench the putter free from Duff as he slides back from my attack with a smooth certainty but his attention is concentrated solely on me and the energised head of the putter comes into contact with his hand, obliterating it.

He actually looks concerned for a moment as segmented metal begins to regrow his hand from the stump. His attention is on the hand. That's why he didn't just keep attacking while the primary me was stood there posing!

It takes nine point three eight seconds to draw the lotus. I'm going to need another opening.

* * *

"You can't beat me, Mister Stoppable, you must have realised this by now," Du smiles with a false sweetness as he twists into a body cross parry and redirects the force of my thrust past himself. I tilt to try and pull back and shift into a defensive position but I can't get enough leverage on the support stanchions.

He twists his body around and slams his knee into my wrist, dislodging the blade from my hand. The blade twists and descends.

I block a sequence of solid punches against my head, being forced ever backwards across the girders and shift into a Tiger stance on a single one of the thin beams.

The blade lands neatly on its point and sits there, quivering.

I thrust my hand towards the swords and will it back to my hand and as always, the lotus begins to surge upwards towards my hand.

Right on queue, Du's arm, shaped into a blade, severs my head. Tumbling end over end, I watch my body convulse slightly and fall after me, striking the rising lotus on the way down.

Du smiles triumphantly.

Bonnie screams in denial.

The eyes of a dozen of me, harden.


	61. Chapter 60

"OK Wade," I mutter towards his image in the mirror, "What's this world changing event going to be, huh?"

"I told you, I don't know. I'm not sure Destiny knew, to be honest with you."

I turn from the wash basin to look directly at him now that I've done my tie properly.

"What use is having access to the script if the actors are going to improvise?" I demand, exasperated.

"I really don't know what to say, Ron. You know that these simulations use a sort of spun reality system to effectively create the reality and people that it contains. Destiny only sets the parameters and adjusts your motives. It's not as if I could get much information in that vampire ridden world either, if you remember."

"True, I suppose."

"I guess that you'll just have to ride it out until I either find the information necessary or something comes up. Now, you're going to be late for your meeting with FBI special agent Hunter," he finishes with a smirk. He'd always said that I wasn't bright enough to make it into the CIA or Global Justice but my need for heroics would either drive me mercenary or into the arms of the FBI. In a way, he was right on both counts.

I smile and make a point of walking through him, something he absolutely despises.

"So what do we know about this agent, Hunter?" I ask over my shoulder as I begin to fiddle with my gun holster. I'm still not really used to carrying such a small and overall, weak weapon.

"Agent Michelle Hunter," he begins, tapping on the link device that we've both come to know affectionately as Ziggy, "29, damn attractive, fits nicely into that 'I'm black and angry, don't get in my way' category of female. You met about three years ago when she commandeered an investigation on the possibility that a gang of agility enhanced fox-themed villains were going to mount a robbery in town. You were in the bank and foiled the robbery and they were all arrested. She tried to have you brought up on charges for undermining her investigation. Chief Hobble threw some weight around and you were fine."

"Why the hell are we working together then? And more to the point, why was I in the bank?"

"It was your day off. Even crazy cops with marital difficulties occasionally go to the bank to use the ATM. Her boss seconded you a year later because you have experience with super villains. You ended up at least being cordial with each other and she's been using you like a paddle to push the boat of her carreer along."

"Have you been at those poetry books I gave you?" I ask, a little confused by a turn of phrase from Wade of all people.

"You said something about understanding emotions and why we have them before you disappeared. I tried to follow what I thought you were getting at but I never got very far with it. Did like the poems though," he replies looking more than a little embarrassed.

"Which ones did you like?" I ask, smiling softly, suspecting that I've managed to get through to him.

"Actually, I got stuck on that one that you wrote. You know, "Dreams are what you make of them," powerful stuff. What does it actually mean?"

"I didn't actually write that one, Wade. It was told to me by a guy in the Dreamtime; calls himself the Narrator. He's like a cross between a nymph and a wanderer, not that that will mean anything to you. It's about the fact that reality is as much what you chose to make of it as what you can experience. It's also about the sadness that comes when a dream unravels. It's both happy and immensely sad at once."

"That really isn't much clearer. I wondered who it was about, given that you never actually dated any blondes in the real world."

"True. Let's go, we'll be late," I say, walking towards the door, picking up my room key on the way out.

* * *

"Officer Stoppable, so glad you decided to finally show up," declares a sour looking black woman. Slim, athletic, pretty and angry to the point of looking unstable.

"I'm sorry, but being a mere police officer, I had trouble with my bigboy pants and had to get the maid to help me with my tie," I reply, to a little sniggering from some of the junior officers clustered behind her.

"Cut the crap, Stoppable, we all know that you're a comedian. Hell, it's probably the reason that you're still a street cop, not a detective."

"Actually, I'm still a street cop so that I can be brought out here and be your bitch every now and then. I've got the saddle in my car if you're up for it, babe."

She seems to simmer for a few moments then seems to pull herself together.

"Fine, don't be professional," she declares a little more irately than probably necessary, "now we brought you out here because you know how villains think. This guy has the whole place pinned down and there's no way that we can bring him down with conventional equipment. Got any ideas?"

"You call that a briefing? Hunter, it's no wonder that you have to call a common police officer in to get you promoted. What exactly are we dealing with?"

"I take it you didn't read what I sent you," she spits back acidly.

"Far as I know, you never sent anything. I asked if there was a briefing and I was met with a chorus of 'no's at the office. Now what are we dealing with?"

"Fine. His name is Goliath. He uses a muscle enhancer to…"

She begins to give me basic details as if she's talking to a slow child. I don't mind. It makes her boil even more when I have to ask questions.

* * *

More than three hundred miles away from Denver, in the sleepy, well weird and science ridden, town of Upperton, things were taking a turn.

Later on, Wade found the underlying program and without certain events, none of us are any the wiser as to why this still occurred.

Seated on the raised platform behind the remand desk, build on high in the 40's to stop people lunging at the desk sergeant, Tara fills out forms and tries not to think about how she really wants to be back on the streets. She's also trying to push away the feeling of sickness that she's been having each morning for a couple of weeks and the gnawing urge she has for two of the English items Ron insists on buying from the international food mart; digestive biscuits with Heinz salad crème. Two things that had no business going together but her mouth began to water at the idea of the nutty saltiness combined with the tangy fats of the dressing.

She sits there, swallowing drool and trying to get her mind back on the fact that Babyshoes had been dragged in again and made a point of being polite to her and asking about her husband. This time, he was in on a rap that the DA would want to bother with, it was a fining offence, in this state at least. She smiled at the possibility that he might have gotten himself arrested to talk to her again. Sweet but insane.

Across her paperwork, a broad mid-western drawl, a woman's voice and pretty with it, drifts to her ears.

"Mrs Stoppable, I presume."

"The address is Sergeant in here, ma'am, but you have the right body," Tara replies before looking up, "What is it that I can do for you?" she asks, trailing off as she realises that the woman stood below her is Kimberly Possible.

"I thought it fair to warn you that I'm going to take Ron off you," Kim replies with a voice that made it sound like she was doing her a favour.

"Oh, really? How are you planning to do that?" Tara asks, a smile breaking out across her face at the absurdity of the declaration.

"Trust me, I know what his deepest desire is and I'm going to give it to him. You're jus the rebound anyway, it's only his stupid loyalty and talent for loving anyone that's kept him with you all this time."

Tara looks as if she's been kicked.

"Why don't you tell the rebound what his deepest desire is and then we'll be playing a more even game?" she asks eventually, worlds of the shy girl under the dizzy shining out thanks to the winds of her insecurity blowing across those gentle sands.

"Ron wants children and I'm completely fertile," Kim replies with the hard triumph of someone who's showing you the fact that she has four kings in her hand.

"And I'm pregnant," Tara says, a shark-like smile of victory spreading over her pretty, gentle lips as she dropped the quartet of aces onto the table.

* * *

Almost a state away, a shiver runs down my spine and a feeling creeps into my flesh, running its fingers through my hair. I turn to Wade, who's watching the bank front with frozen interest.

"Something monumental just happened," I say, much to his obvious worry.

He doesn't get a chance to reply.

The front wall of the bank basically dissolves as a giant in what looks like scaled up steel football armour comes careening through it, shoulder down. There is one detail that makes him look utterly absurd. Over his shoulder is draped the largest, most obvious swag bag I've ever seen. The thing probably contained industrial fertiliser at some point but now, small flutters of money come pouring out of the neck as he looks one way, then the other at the collected SWAT teams of three cities and an FBI heavy response team.

They begin to open fire and the thickness of his armour begins to become apparent as armour piercing bullets begin to ricochet around the area, doing more damage that Goliath has bothered to do thus far.

I reach up to my helmet and feel the small moulding on the outside of the casing, remembering where the nozzle of the little beam emitter was before pulling the Kimmunicator like device from my belt. I thumb the control and watch as a grinning afro wearing face materialises on the screen.

"Ron, I take it we're nearing go time!" Wade hollers out at me, much to the holographic version's disgust. He's spent the entire afternoon dwelling on the fact that in this police ridden world, he seems to have turned into a cross between Shaft and Huggybear.

"That's true. I hope the package is in the air," I reply, knowing that supposedly, there was an A-10 Warthog carrying a pair of specially modified beam guided missiles on the way.

"Fist and Tangle are both in the air," he replies happily, "ETA two minutes."

"Great, so I have to hold him up for two minutes?"

"You have Mystical Jazz going on, you'll manage," he replies cheerfully before disappearing.

"What I want to know," says the holo-Wade, "is who designed those missiles. They seem like something out of a Green Arrow comic."

"Off hand, Wade, I'd say I had something to do with it," I reply, not wanting to have to point out that sticking a weighted boxing glove on the end of a guided missile sounds like just the kind of thing that I would do.

I watch as Goliath ploughs into one of the SWAT vans, knocking it down and scattering men and barricades like pins in a bowling tournament. Steeling myself that I'm not going to get badly hurt, despite his size, I ready my riot shield and the baton, crackling with energy from its stun system and step out of cover. On this prearranged signal, the shooting ceases.

"Goliath!" I call out, causing him to wheel around and look at me, "I've come so that you can prove how powerful you are, Goliath!"

"Police man!" he yells in a deafening bellow that makes window panes rattle slightly. He knows me, we've already established this; I was the one who went toe to toe with him long enough for GJ to steal the money he stole back in Atlanta. He looks pissed.

He hammers towards me and battle is joined. I dance for about a minute before falling back and dropping into a crouch. I lower the baton to the ground and twist the barrel of the laser on the helmet so that a narrow green pencil of energy stabs out. Now all I have to do is keep looking at his head.

Easier said than done.

He charges again and I use the baton to smash his fist away, discharging electricity into his suit. He staggers a little, then looks up as the Warthog screams overhead.

He shows a brief look of confusion as he's laid out by a 70KG rubber fist on the end of a rocket.

* * *

Author's Note: For those of you who are wondering what the poem bit is on about, you can find it on my DeviantArt page, along with a first draft of Ron, circa 6y AK. 


	62. Chapter 61

"What is this, Baxter? You thought I wouldn't find out?" I demand, rage filling me up to the brim in that moment and cascading over the edges of my thoughts. I hold in my hands a tattered length of bandage that says that Baxter is not what he claimed to be. The green stain indicates that he isn't a human, but a synthetic.

"I never took pains to keep it secret, Ron, you should know that. I don't lie very much at all, do I?"

I surge forward, letting my anger guide me and seize his collar, dragging him clean off the floor. He scarcely bats an eyelid.

"You're a fcking synthetic and you didn't bother to tell me?" I howl and he seems like he's just had something disgusting spat in his face.

"You know, considering you're an honorary Paragon, I'd hope that you'd maintain a level of decorum."

"Decorum, what do you know about proper behaviour, you're not even real!" I howl back at him, angry and hurt that the leader of the British resistance, the man who's helped us save so many lives here in China is a hollow man, a synthetic.

"I am real, Ron. I was created as a copy of Lord Julian Baxter because that would allow me to infiltrate the resistance of Britain and undermine it. Unfortunately, I was nearby when the bastards sounded Drake's drum. Next thing I know, my old volitional programming is gone and I'm possessed with this very specific need to ensure that Britain remains in foreign hands for as little time as possible."

I just look at him for a minute.

"What are you saying?" I ask, finally.

"I'm the spirit Britannic and if you so much as suggest that you're not going to help me free Britain from foreign dominion, I'm going to destroy you, Ronald."

I'm taken aback. Immortal and Arahat once said that the British behaved like they had a religion unto themselves and suggested that there might be an avatar of such, but I didn't understand what they were suggesting.

"You're the very English Paragon? A synthetic?"

"Before that, they've been a stable boy, a pirate, a cabin boy and an incompetent admiral I wouldn't let command a fleet in my bathtub but we've all risen to the challenge of keeping Britain free. Only fitting that a traitor by his very birth would rise up in our darkest hour, isn't it?"

"You're the Paragon?" I ask again, hopelessly as I drop him back down to the floor.

"If you're wondering why I haven't just smote you to prove the point, my powers work only when I'm leading folk. I bring out the British in people; the bloody mindedness that prevented the Blitz from breaking the people of London, the spirit that led the British fleet of victory at Trafalgar. That said; I'm sure I'll live long enough to give some poignant last words, we always do."

I sink down to my knees, muttering, "you're a synthetic," and he steps forward and puts his hand on my shoulder and rubs it to sooth my shattered conceptions.

* * *

"I'm not here for the Chinese," Baxter says in a slow level voice to those arrayed around the folding table that we're using to have our meeting. He continues in the same, level voice, "I never have been. Most of my associates came out here to help but I am bound to other goals and I cannot put them aside for a minute.

"This, is professor Chin Yamen, one of the foremost experts in the world on non-organovores. This may sound like science fiction but he studies bacteria and sub-bacteria that eat silicates and the like. He's one of the unchipped that Drakken is trying to capture and the entire reason I'm here.

"I have an idea, that will require all of your help to make it come to fruition but I think it can work. I want to rescue him and have him manufacture a silicon oxidising virus, for want of a better word. We'll have him tailor it so that it can't escape form the British Isles and unleash it. Every Diablo that lands there or flies too close will collapse into sand and be destroyed. We shall make Britain into a stone age haven of the free."

Wade is the first of us to speak.

"You're insane. How are you going to stop it spreading for one, assuming that it can live outside a body unlike most viruses, it'll carry on the wind and have destroyed all the silicon based technology of the world in a few months."

"Actually, I have thought of that. Sea water; we make it allergic to salt water and it can't cross the channel. Simple, efficient."

"What about synthetics?" I ask and he looks up at me.

"We really don't know what it will do to synthetics because we're mostly organic. Aside from our control imperatives, we don't have any silicon in us."

The whole table goes quiet.

"Yes," he smiles, "that's right, I'm a synthetic and I'm planning to overthrow a sizable portion of Drakken's regime. I know this sounds like a lot of risk for people you don't have anything to do with, but once the British Isles have been cleansed of the Diablos, the Paragons and my soldiers can kill the last of the synthetic infiltrators that cling to their original programming and then the Isles will be a haven for those who need to escape from oppression. It'll be a hard life but it'll be liveable."

"You're willing to risk your life for this?" I ask from the far end of the table. I didn't believe I could trust a synthetic until this moment.

"Yes, I am," Baxter replies as if that is the most natural thing in the world. If he's right and he is the Spirit Britannic, then it is the most natural thing in the world for him.

"Then I am too, Baxter, on the condition that we stop the next offensive here first."

"You have yourself a deal, Ronald."

* * *

Rain glistens on my skin as I pound through the underbrush around the complex, my heart hammering in my chest like the striker on an old alarm clock. Classic two bell shique.

Ahead, I can feel a being breathing slowly, taking in her surroundings.

The scent.

Synthetic, female, frightened. Who the hell would build a synthetic that is afraid of the dark?

I'll never understand a lot of the logic in what Drakken's done with this world of his, but here in China, there's a strange juxtaposition of the real and the false.

What am I saying? It was like that before he got his hands on the country. Now, it's a whole world of weird.

Slipping between grass stalks like wind, I advance on my target, making sure to keep downwind of her. There's a glint of moonlight on blonde ahead and I pause for a second, taking in the scene. Tara certainly is beautiful in the moonlight, even if this nation's best feature at this time of year is the tightness of the air with the humidity. Yes, I said that was the best feature. No, don't get me started on the mosquitoes.

Easing a portion of the Lotus from my arm, I feel the tingling that I always experience and allow it to form a length of mono-filament.

The blade lashes out in the slightest of heartbeats, once, twice, three times.

Without a sound the synthetic collapses into the liquid of the paddy.

I don't even pause to regret having to slay her; I'm too close now. Two gestures with the filament cuts chunks from the security fence around the compound and I hurry through the gap, no longer walking truly on the ground, rather dancing across the strands of the grass. There are search lights moving over the area like something out of the Great Escape and I have to pause for a moment, pulling my shadows around me like a cloak as one of the larger beams sweeps past my feet.

Ahead is a squat concrete building that houses a synthetic engineering laboratory. Not the 1950's style architecture that any Middleton resident would recognise as the core of scientific endeavour but a solid square block of concrete, sitting like an escaped criminal in the middle of the gentle Chinese countryside.

Seeking a way in, I instantly disregard the main doors and the windows. They'll all be alarmed and comfortably within the kill zones of any defence systems on the base. There must be something else. Twitching my senses out, I find something, a crack…there. I'm in, though I suspect that Drakken may have worked out how to suppress my powers. He's a hell of a lot smarter than I'd given him credit for in the old days, he's learned and adapted so well in the last few years.

Six wispy tendrils of magically imbued steel slide into that crack and spread through the wall. To my mythically sensitive eyes, it's as if a glowing rash were spreading through the fabric of the wall and snaking through it. The wall proves to have an allergy and begins to break and twitch. A neat circular hole of material collapses to fine powder and I gust through into the first room.

An incubator. Instantly, knowing that I can't let this become a patient zero situation, I transmute a portion of the air in the room to gaseous petrocarbons and mentally ignite it. A violent blast of flame explodes from the hole, engulfing me and I happily inhale the fire and smoke, turning it into the sweetest of spring water.

I step through into the room and hammer the door once with a clenched fist, buckling the metal and casting it into the laboratory beyond. I hear a woman scream and instantly regret not using the quivering palm on the door. Well, the really serious, mystical version of the quivering palm. Conventional one can't be stopped by muscle density; mystical one disrupts the bonds in normal matter with concussive vibrations.

Splitting once, twice, three times, I fan out into the room, Stunner up and ready. I feel some of my more passionate copies disabling a few belligerent members of the scientific staff with direct hits.

"I'm looking for Professor Chin Yamen," I declare in my scruffiest Chinese, "I have no wish to hurt anyone in this action. I apologise form my entrance."

As I say this last part, one of me hurries forward and begins tending to the woman I hit with the door. She has a gash in her hairline that'll need stitches and a possible concussion but I think she'll be fine.

I got no answer to the call for Chin's location. Ditching my attempt at politeness, I unsuppress the cap on my Tongues ability and shift a little power into a transmutation that makes my voice sound like the voice of God himself.

"I'm done being polite. Where the hell is Chin Yamen?"

"She's in the north wing!" come a smattering of terrified voices from around the room.

"Thank you" I reply as we move out and head back.

As I run, it's like running into and increasing wall of wind and my copies are forced together and meld painfully back into my body. He's found some way of sanctifying the building, though to which damn religion, I'll never know. I'd assume it was classical Chinese religion, given how easy it can be for things to gain religious significance out here.

Fighting painfully against the pressure, I force the Lotus out into its primary form and begin to cut through the barriers that stand between me and my objective. The last door falls away onto a short corridor with three doors on it. The first opens onto a small computer room, empty save a selection of gently flickering screens, some showing in the green and black of long past technology.

The second is a shaded, lonely looking lab with a single lamp providing light to only a small section around a desk that holds some kind of probe microscope and scanner array. It's unoccupied so I'm just turning to go after the final door when I hear a toilet flush and as I turn around, I see a short Han woman of middle years looking at me in shock. Despite the twist of horror on her face and the fact that she was in the process of scratching her arse when she froze, I can see that she was very attractive in her prime.

"Professor Chin?" I ask, tentatively. She nods. "My name is Ronald Stoppable. I'm public enemy number one and the leader of the resistance. We want your help on a project."

"I will not help you kill people, rebel scum."

"We don't hurt humans. Only the robots and I can tell that you aren't a synthetic."

"They are people too, Rebel-scum. I'll not help you."

"Baxter will be most disappointed."

"You know Baxter?"

"Yes."

"I come with you."

I pause. That was easier than I expected.


	63. Chapter 62

"I need your help, Wade."

"And you have it, Ron; I want to see Du gone more than anyone here. Just tell me where to stand and I'll fight like the very devil."

"That's the thing, old friend. I don't want you to be at the fight."

"You want me to hide?"

"No, I have another task for you. You remember that interface system you used to infiltrate the computer generated realities?"

"Yes, the vectron harness, why?"

"Could that be modified to allow you to enter the mainframe itself?"

"What are you asking here, Ron? You know it can because that's how I got you out of there in the first place. I snuck into Destiny and convinced it that you needed removing from the simulations. Wait a minute…"

"Looks like you've gotten there on your own. I have a package of instructions for what you need to do with the first and the second is simply a case of freeing from the matrix and then locating her in their fortress. A resourceful guy like you shouldn't have any issues what with Drakken's open door policy."

"Sigh...If you're a good guy, the doors always open."

* * *

Du isn't as stupid as his arrogance makes him seem. In fairness, he's one of the most intelligent people I've ever met, which, living in Middleton is saying something. His duplicates are the same. The one that just vanquished the primary me is closing in to confirm the kill, though how he's planning to do that with the aggregate body image principal in operation, I have no idea.

Taking my moment, I fire another blast from my light cannon into the rapidly regenerating Du in front of me, inflicting about eight more seconds worth of repair time.

I call the lotus. The prime me was able to do this so much faster, yet I, a manifestation of confidence itself can't call on the damn thing in less than nine point eight three seconds. Sometimes the world really doesn't make sense, even to Ron.

The blade is virtually fully formed as Duff strikes out at Du and is smoothly blocked, a hand catching his overhand blow with the club and the heel of Du's hand smashing into Duff's chest, propelling him across the room, clean through a couple of female synthetics.

"I'm ready for you, Mr Stoppable," he smiles at me as he drops into a martial arts stance and makes a wonderfully cliché gesture for me to attack. I find myself disinclined to respond to his request and close my stance into a Mountain Stands and cross my arms, a slim little smile on my lips and my mind as open as possible.

* * *

"Nobody threatens my Bonnie!" I cry, anger making the words truer than I've ever spoken as I dart cleanly past the Drakken faced bitch with her foot on Bonnie's neck. Only motherfucker who gets to stand on my bitch's neck is me!

There's a brief scream from the synthetic before her neck begins to close up and the bleeding stops. She smirks at me slightly as her heel begins to twitch on Bonnie's neck.

"Oh, you really thought I wasn't expecting that, Drakken?" I demand, insulted by his impudence, despite the fact that the synthetic's face has returned to normal. Narrowing my eyes to draw the mark, I see it occurring and it does; my strongest fingers on each hand hammer into the clotting gash at her neck and I pull the hole wider.

She staggers back desperately, hands abandoning weapons to grip my wrists and try to slow the death that I'm so keen to give her. This just makes me smile.

"You threaten my Bonnie, you make me annoyed," I say, feeling strange as my eyebrows rise up a little higher. There's something scratching at the edge of my mind but I can't place it.

With a vicious grunt and a shift of my weight, I transfer my hand smoothly into the inside of her neck and slide it down. The look of desperation on her face is priceless. You'll suffer until I say you can die.

One design feature of a synthetic is that they have a crude pseudo-digestive system so they can fake eating and a crude copy of sexual internals so that a cursory examination can't tell the difference. So angry that this seems like a valid option, I grab hold of this atrophied nearly organ and haul it out of the gash, bringing syntho-gel out with it.

The gurgling, gasp that she utters as she expires makes even me regret my actions.

"It's alright Bonnie, I'm not going to let that bastard get his filthy blue hands on you," I say, kneeling down and holding her close in my arms, covering her with syntho-gel, "only I'm allowed to even think about doing those things to you," I smile, trying to lighten the situation a little.

"You're Him, aren't you?"

"I'm who?"

"Passion. The bastard, Passion."

"Yes…I am. Is that a problem?"

"Does this mean that Ron loves me?" she asks, tears in her eyes.

"I'm not sure. I'm not used to feeling so many things about one person at once, but I know this: from me to the meekest, most monkey-phobic copy of him, any Ron would die for you. How many others this is true for, I have no idea."

"Thank you," she sobs, holding me close and washing away my coating of gel. I find myself overwhelmed by the tangle of things that I feel. I'm supposed to be clarity and passion. Anger and lust are simple things but how could something as ephemeral as love be powerful enough to twist my mind and quiet those fires?

I don't understand…

* * *

"It looks like once again, Mr Stoppable, you just weren't enough to save what you love," Du says coolly, looking into the eyes of me dead self's head, holding it by the hair at his eye-line. "You were too incompetent to save Miss Kimberly, you couldn't think of a way to save that Tara girl that the master used in his absurd simulations and now you can't even save that pitiful bitch Rockwaller and your pitiful little act of defiance from being consumed by your incompetence."

My head tilts slightly, much to his surprise because I lack a neck, and look him clean in the eyes.

"You sound almost concerned, William," I reply as he mentally checks himself and prepares to respond. He never gets the chance.

The lotus whips through his body from the tip of his tailbone to the top of his skull in a smooth, practiced move that I have to say, I'm impressed that I can pull off without eyes.

There is a brief creaking noise before he begins to part, the look of shock on his face palpable. My extra weigh is causing the two halves to press against each other rather than fall apart.

"William, you should have taken the time to read Monkey. You'd have known the majority of my abilities right off the bat," I say happily, puckering and kissing the air at him. As he collapses, my body takes the fistful of hair from his hand and lowers me back into place. The two severed parts bond instantly, flowing together without mention.

I waste a few moments destroying the last remnants of his frame, grinding him to the finest powder I can before turning and moving to help the stricken Tim.

* * *

William surges forward. For all his patience and calculating bastardry, he's still driven by an imperative to kill me. It's his first mistake.

The point of the blade snakes out smoothly to catch him in a simple, battle ending blow to his powercore.

He shifts around the clumsy momentum using defence and continues his assault, a fist heading towards my face. He makes contact with my psychic egg and the kinetic energy of his fist is sufficient to force and distort the mythic armour that it provides. He continues to press his strike. His second mistake.

The blade cuts happily up and through his arm in a sweep that was carried entirely through my wrist. When your blade is as sharp as God's chisel, well, force of arm is not usually necessary. He leaps back and pauses to let the self repair system begin its work. His third and final mistake.

He looks at me in shock and disbelief as the point of the blade begins the first stroke of Dao in the centre of his power core. He's still wearing that look of terror as the movement radical is cut into place and he falls into fragments. He carried his surprise to his grave.

* * *

I've truly had enough with this fight and it seems that Jim will not be arriving to help us. I shake my head sadly as I release the final solution impulse into the gestalt.

The lotus evaporates into a cloud and spreads like a whirlwind, linking with all the other lotus blades in the area. The cloud spreads and dances, in tight whorls and slack currents, dashing through the chests of synthetics and scouring the Diablos into powder. We visit our wrath upon them like that of God himself and frankly, we couldn't have done a better job with the aid of the arc of the Covenant itself.

There is only one of me that hasn't spread its arms and lifted from the ground as the lotus scoured our enemies from the face of the earth. As each of the copies walks over to me and is reabsorbed, the hair returning to my scalp, I make my way to Passion, who is cradling an obviously shaken Bonnie in his arms in a way I never thought possible for him.

I lay my hand on his shoulder and I'm shocked to find that rather than him dissolving into me, I shift into him, becoming me and whole in the position that he had occupied.

"Are you alright? I didn't hurt you, did I?" I ask as I raise her chin slightly and look into her little blue eyes.

"Oh Ronnie," he sobs, burying herself into me.

* * *

Author's Note: The whole thing with Wade in the beginning of this chapter is actually tied to _What Ron's May come_, but is included to explain why Wade isn't actually here. Ron's mention of him being reinforcements in the earlier chapter, well, I have no idea about that either… 


	64. Chapter 63

There is only one thing left to do in a situation like this. I've been training him for some time, but I don't know if it will be enough. He's a good kid and he's certainly saved me a lot of issues in the last few months, given that since I started training him, he's picked up enough of my older personality traits to really be a hit with those who used to like me.

The fact that he fell for Tara the moment he met her was frankly an example of how much effect I've had on him and my joy that they had finally found another who had the energy to love the other like they deserve seems to be an example of how he has brushed off on me.

Damien is growing into a fine man, a competent leader and a skilled warrior and now that our fight is becoming all the grimmer, he's stepping up more and more.

He hasn't once requested to be sent to Albion, he hasn't even asked to be shifted to a less dangerous zone; he stays here and guards Ann and little Lynn and looks after Tara as she wants it, as if she's another soldier, not a thing of glass.

* * *

Baxter made the decision a hell of a lot easier for me by reminding me of Merlin and Arthur.

"Damien, there's something I need to tell you."

"What is it, Master?"

"I'd really rather you didn't call me that."

"You called me all the way up here," he gestures around us at the view of the Middleton valley so far below us on the peak of Mount Middleton, "to tell me that you want me to stop calling you master?"

"Don't be a smartass."

"Why anyway? I'm still your student. Hell, we both know there's no way I'll ever be as powerful as you."

"That's why I called you up here."

"There's a way for me to become that powerful? I don't want it. I'm strong enough to help those that need it. I don't need or want more power."

"I'm not talking about magic or gimmicks but I think it's time that you took your place as my superior."

"But there's no way I can become more powerful than you…"

"Power? Is that all you can think of? The ability to end lives and shake the foundations of the world? In the six months since I started training you, you've learned to stop bullets with faith, walk on ceilings and the art of asking nicely for weather. You can fight a trio of Diablos alone and you think that there is more power to be had? No, that's not what I'm here to force on you at all."

"Force? What are you talking about, Master?"

"The fact that you still think of me as your Master is what's holding you back. I think it's time for there to be a change of structure in the rebellion."

"I don't understand."

"I'll make this so simple, I could understand it. You're now the leader of the rebellion."

"What?"

"You heard me."

"How can you do this? I'm no leader. I mean, sure, there are folks who listen to me and I can take a squad into the field, but there's no way that I could keep a council going like you do."

"Leadership is about learning to trust people, Damien. I'm not about to vanish and you'll have support from Steve, Baxter and Brick if no-one else on the council. Haven't you ever noticed that you've been taking the reigns and keeping their pettiness out of the debates recently? I hardly have to lift a finger and they're starting to treat me like Merlin more and more as time goes by."

"Merlin? What's Merlin got to do with this?"

"I think it's time for the stable boy to stand up and be counted, Mort."

"I'm no Arthur."

"Neither was he when he hauled that sword out of that anvil. He had to win a spate of battles and break the damn thing on a tyrant's armour before he believed in himself like that. Trust me, Damien, the decision is more or less in place already."

"Why do you want to do this? You're a great leader."

"I'm a good leader but I'm a better warrior. I need to be used as a weapon. You, on the other hand, are a leader of the most Bon Diggety type. I've not met one so skilled since I first met Kim."

"You were four."

"And you assume that I didn't know greatness when I saw it? Just like you assume that you don't see such when you look in the mirror? You're free to reject the post, but I assure you that the change is already over but the shouting and pomp."

"Me, the leader?" he asks quietly as he drops down and leans against me.

"I think both Tara and Katie would be proud as hell of you."

"Maybe you're right…"

* * *

"There's one other thing," I say as he rises to begin the descent of the mountain.

"What's that, Ron?"

"Every champion throughout history has had a trademark, something to mark them out as special. Arthur had Excalibur, Moses had his tables and Churchill had his cigar. We thought that you'd need something like that. Now, don't get excited about this, we couldn't make you one because we have no idea how and all the agencies of heaven capable of letting us have a weapon are ignoring us because of the spiritual crisis on earth. We did manage to find something that isn't traced back to Monkey and is within your capabilities to wield."

"What is it?"

"This," I say, producing a three foot javelin with a leaf shaped head and long scratch crossed lines running its length, "is the weapon of Cú Chulainn [Coo-Coulan, Gae Bolg. There's some legend about it having to be used in a ritual manner but Baxter assures me that that's not important."

"What's its power?"

"Supposedly, it can only be removed from the target by cutting it out, but we think that's simply an old fashioned way of saying that it'll kill basically anything if you hit. We also suspect that this is actually a shape shifting weapon as well, explaining his other weapons."

"I'm meant to go into battle with a melee weapon?"

"Damien, if it can kill a Diablo dead, it's more useful than most of the stuff we have. Open your mind to the possibilities and unleash the power of imagination!"

"You're weird Ron Stoppable."

"But you DO like me and that's what counts."


	65. Chapter 64

"I've been jumping through your hoops for days now, Shego; I've saved dozens of these clones from dozens of your situations and I'm still no closer to breaking nor completing whatever sick fantasy you have for me so why don't you just give this crazy scheme up?"

She tilts my head back and strokes a pair of perfectly manicured fingers across the raw flesh on my cheek. She smiles the smile that I've come to hate; so full of deranged affection that I'm actually convinced that this is her way of telling me 'I love you'.

Locking my eyes onto hers, I try and will those tainted green orbs to turn to stone, burn and melt or change into mist. I can't work any of my powers here, well, none of the ones that are useful when I can't break free of the manacles that bind me. She sees the contempt that I'm weighing behind my eyes and shoves me back slightly.

"Now, Ronnie, play nice. You know you love getting to touch Kimmie and pretend that you're saving her from her death. You know that I'm making you happy," she smiles wickedly, teeth gleaming like polished marble, "and when you've had your fun, you'll give me mine too…"

I told a lie. Apparently my control over my up-choke reflex is still perfect.

My vomit hits the floor in the gap between her legs given that she's splayed her legs to straddle a chair. This is less than classy and I'm assuming that she's regretting choosing to wear nothing but green PVC knee boots and sit on a backless chair.

She recoils away from that splatter, making a little angry sound.

"Sorry Shego, I messed up your boots," I smile wickedly through my stained teeth.

"Why you…!" she hisses between clenched teeth and slaps me hard with a half lit hand. I feel a tooth shatter under the force of vibrations. I pull back up to my feet and look up at her, trying to gauge whether I've been able to put her off trying her luck again today.

She stares at me for a few more moments before reaching out a hand and shoving my forehead with her fingertips.

"Why must you always spoil the mood?" she asks with the bitterness of a lover whose tenderness is met with farting. I find that I need to wretch again at the concept of her thinking about me that way.

She leaves the room and almost the same instant, the sprinklers come on, cold, so that if I manage to sleep a wink, I'll have a hell of a headache in the morning.

* * *

"Ron, help me, please!" Kim cries from the centre of the impossibly contrived deathtrap. The small circular disc slowly lowers towards the ground which is coated in liquid helium which will engage the super conductive properties of the plate to turn the mild and painful shocks she's suffering into a lethal burst. Meanwhile, in order to get her, I have to either swim through liquid helium at 1.8 Kelvin or bypass a sequence of three concentric cages each charged with increasing voltages. 

If I was to try to get through the cages, I'd have more than just burns and if I try to break the helium I'll die without hint. Oh well.

I'm kind of through with caring about these clones. I can't even imagine the real Kim screaming like this. She'd be there staring defiantly and this is somehow a pathetic epitaph to her memory, a crying little girl with a set of fake memories that have as incomplete a version of the real Kim's life as a poorly made scrapbook.

I simply sit down and close off my faculties until the screaming stops. Fortunately, it's brief. I begin to commend her soul to the afterlife before I remember that such is futile with a clone.

* * *

Kim fatality number, erm…well, according to the marks on my arm, twenty seven just occurred. I stopped trying after about thirty successful rescues and these deaths stopped bothering me some time ago. Shego seems to be less than pleased by this circumstance. I think I'll keep up my cowardice strike for a little longer.

* * *

Crashing against the wall, I shut off my muscles just before impact. Like a sack of spuds, I strike the wall and rattle and warp rather than breaking. I crumple to the floor and stop moving. I sense more than see or hear her approach I don't bother responding as her fist smashes into the thin band of soft tissue between my ribs and flank and a section of my belly begins to flood with bloody murk. 

I keep silent the whole time.

Strong hands grip my and haul me up, wrenching my weight over her shoulder and then lashing it back at another angle so that I strike a bench protruding from the wall and slump. Once again, she grabs my face in her vice-like hands, the crux of her hand over my mouth.

"You're so pathetic, Stoppable! You won't even save your beloved Kimmie, just because you failed to do it once!"

I wink and kiss her hand.

She retaliates by smashing the back of my head into the steel of the wall. I take the moment that her action provided me and bit down into the flesh now between my teeth. She squeals slightly in shock and drops me.

I spit the blood onto the ground and scrawl a rune before she can strike me. As I pitch back over, I begin to will the Lotus free. The fine mist trickles out of my arm's many pores and slithers up my flesh into my mouth. As she kicks me for the fifth time, the sacraments of the place begin to reassert themselves.

Wedged between my teeth is about point eight ounces of metal, enough to hurt her seriously when I get another chance. I could kill her if I thought she was too sick to help.

I lie back and take my beating, wondering when I'll get another chance to do something like that again and cursing the fact that I couldn't find a better place to hide the weapon. I feel like I have spinach in my teeth.

* * *

"Well this is a fine mess you've gotten us into this time, Ron!" Kim growls with mounting hostility as I simply shrug at her. We were 'captured' by my being shoved into an air vent where I encountered Kim. About forty seconds later, my weight caused the vent to collapse and we were thrust into a cell, stripped naked. 

I look her up and down, like what I see but keep a cap on my libido, then shifted a little more inwards and started to snigger.

"What?" she demands after a few seconds. Ignoring her, I look up at the roof.

"Shego, this has got to be the dumbest, most transparent idea you've come up with yet. I'm guessing Dr D came up with the first ones and now you're falling back on your own ideas?"

Kim just stares at me in shocked silence as I rise to my feet and start pacing the room. I don't think her eyes stray above the waist the whole time.

"Oi, you even programmed this one to be _that_ impressed with my penis? You really are slipping."

I turn to look at another part of the roof.

"Would it speed things up if I killed her myself?" I demand and hear a gasp from about four feet away from my hips. Kim had been crawling forwards at that point and now has a horrified expression hidden by a pair of hands.

Hardening a little, guessing that I may get a chance to shatter the wards if I give in, I make a decision. I punch the Kim so hard that I fracture most of the bones in her face, knocking her into unconsciousness, soon to die of shock.

"Alright Shego! I'll tell you what; you put me in a comfortable room with some strawberries, Champaign and nice sheets and I'll Fuck her for you! That sound satisfactory? No games, no deception and no romance but you'll have your Kim-Ron hardcore sex video to sell on the internet and I'll not have to touch another one of these goddamn clones again!

I think I get my answer as at least a dozen hidden lasers shoot me simultaneously.

* * *

Shego has nice taste in décor if nothing else. The curtains are quite tasteful and match the upholstery of the room well and the lighting of the scented candles, combined with the smell gives the whole affair a lovely, romantic edge. 

Considering the attempts at bad porn direction that she's subjected me to so far, I'm impressed and very nearly swept up in the mood. I sit on the edge of the bed, kicking my heels and wondering what I'm going to be confronted with.

More than an hour passes and I sit in many positions around the room, as the bored are want to do. The dresser is leaned on and the bed used as a seat, I even took a quick shower and then settled down into a meditative stance and opened up as many channels as I could. I may not have the usual excess energy that I'm used to but having the channels open would allow me to move it quickly in that brief time when it becomes available.

Eventually, the lights dim and part of me realise that there is a small amount of something soporific in the air. My defences are somewhat weaker than I would have preferred when the door opens, admitting a sensuous flame haired silhouette in a Middleton Mad Dogs cheer uniform. I quake slightly; this is like so many of my fantasies coming true all at once, granted by the devil.

In the dim light, we kiss, make tender movements and our bodies entwine in the throws of passion and heaven help me, I enjoy it greatly.

In the instants before I finish, she bucks back, enthralled by her own pleasure and I'm sickened to my very core; part of her make up has smudged revealing a glassy mint green shade that I know so well.

"Shego! Ah!!" I manage before I erupt and she convulses with pleasure.

Seizing the sickness and rage, I twist it into a blade that the Lotus mimics as I spit my feelings into her face. A brutal, if shallow slash it carved into her cheek as she's tossed back of me by the kinetic energy of the attack.

Hurling myself towards the outer wall, I muster a psychic edge with the most power I've ever thrown into one and engage my flight, smashing brutally through the stones and out.

I can hear Shego screaming after me with more than a hint of betrayal in her voice and almost feel regret. Almost.

Having run and flown more than a mile, my horrible pain and the twisting of my emotions catch up with me and I collapse from the sky.

I lie broken in the rain and rejoice that I'm free for now.

* * *

Author's Note: Not your average SheRo encounter, eh? 


	66. Chapter 65

Tara rolls her hips against mine as we join slowly and tenderly and I'm forced to gasp by the pleasure of the experience. In the last while, we've gotten very good at this dance. She always agreed that I was a bon-diggety dancer and I love proving that to her.

She's the first to realise what's wrong as brilliant light floods in through the windows and frail curtains behind me and I have only a moment to throw up my psychic egg to protect us from the shards of shattered glass that cannon into the room. It isn't enough and a long shard buries itself into my thigh, thankfully missing all of the arteries.

"What the hell?" I manage to ask as a trio of men in S.W.A.T. gear come in through the breach, wielding submachine guns of varying sizes. I react without thinking, throwing Tara off the side of the bed and hurling myself in a physics defying thrust that allows me to slam my shin into the faceplate of the first trooper. He goes down and there's a spurt of blood to show that I've shattered his nose.

Without pausing, I whip my leg around, deflecting the barrel of the man next to him. Bullets spray through the ceiling and I hammer an open palm thrust into his chest, catapulting him back out of the room.

"Why are Supe-hunters after us?" Tara screams from behind the bed as I twist the weapon from the hands of the third soldier and thump him in the stomach with it. He reels as another trio of soldiers emerge from the brilliance and begin firing.

If these men are here to catch a super villain, my powers will probably be a nail in my coffin but too much time relying on them means that my instant reaction to being shot at was to stop the bullets with Lotus barbs. They stop after a moment in confusion and I flinch a little force into the now mangled bullets, stringing them into three fists of lead and viciously punching each several times.

The power outflow has my eyes glowing now and a powerful wind lashes around me, tousling my hair and making their desperation at being savaged with their own bullets all the more palpable.

Abandoning the mangled bullets, I shift the Lotus into a fine mist of iron and send it flooding out to destroy the floodlights and interfere with those outside.

"Ron, how?" Tara gasps as I reach out to her, absentmindedly kicking the man I punched in the gut in the head.

"I try to avoid having to do stuff like that. We have to get out of here; take my hand and trust me."

She timidly reaches her hand into mine and before she can gasp, we've flown out of the hole in the wall, climbing into the sky and away. As I settle into the Lotus to use the Cloud Trapeze, she straddles my lap.

"Ron, what the hell happened back there?"

"I don't know. I've never fought troops like that before. I suspect either Kim or Hunter had something to do with this though."

* * *

"I'm not even sure how Destiny is coping with this," Wade says from the back seat of the car. It's a stolen Pontiac from the dawn of time but it's big enough for Tara to drive while I sit spread-eagled beside her and remove the glass shards from my leg.

"There must be a limit somewhere, unless it's cycling things out of existence to allow us to keep going," I reply through gritted teeth as I haul the shard free and wash it with alcohol I found in the trunk. Antifreeze is lethally toxic to humans but the worst I can expect is a bit of a headache from it.

"What are you guys talking about?" Tara asks, hunching slightly over the wheel.

"Wade, explain."

"The simulation can only handle a certain amount of space within its limits. When Ron was in college, the bubble was barely a mile across. They've shifted in size from a small house to a whole city between simulations but this simulation seems to have gone at least fifty miles past the red line we established in the other simulations."

"So what happens if we hit the edge of the universe?"

"That, Tara, we don't know. We've never actually tried."

"You don't know? Maybe we have crossed the red line. Maybe we're ceasing to exist as we speak!"

"I don't think anything like that's going to happen. Worst case, we'll run into a sort of wall. I suspect that the computer is simply trying to end this simulation now that it's become completely derailed from the original projection."

"How does it do that Ron?" she asks timidly.

"By killing either myself or Kim. We're destined to be together, it seems and I have no idea how to sever the red string that binds us. When I die, I reincarnate in another one of these worlds."

"What happens to me then?"

I shake my head as I have no idea.

* * *

"You can't leave me and go off to try something heroic!"

"Actually, I can and I intend to, Tara. I'm not willing to let anything happen to you."

"Do you know that nothing will happen to me if you die? Do you know that? Does Wade?"

"No, but that's an unknown fate. If I'm forced to protect you from these people, both of us are almost guaranteed to die and I'm not willing to play that gamble. You're going to stay here and if you survive my leaving this universe, I want you to go on and have a happy life. You deserve that and remember that I'll always be with you in your heart."

"Ron!" she cries after me as I get into the car and begin to drive. Wade just looks across at me as she hammers on the side of the wagon in tears. I keep driving, not looking back. I can't afford a distraction like this right now.

* * *

"Lo, there do I see my father. Lo, there do I see my mother. There do I see my brothers and my sisters. Lo, there do I see the line of my people, back to the beginning. They call to me, the bid me join them in the halls of Valhalla, where the brave may live forever."

I recite these words, actually feeling like I understand them. There are more than three hundred troops arrayed against me. Some human, some synthetic and I really don't care about the difference right now.

"Drakken! You want to see what I'm capable of? You really want to see?"

I expand myself through the battlefield and find each target in turn. Spinning out through time in this area, I use that moment of prescience to calculate the most efficient way of doing all of this.

Lashing out, I scythe the tail rotor from one of the helicopters and send it careening into another. Both collapse on a collection of troops. I begin to divide, letting Passion know that I have absolutely no patience for him deviating. With my mind, I set fire to the iron mist of the Lotus and surge through the ranks of my opponents like the wrath of god.

Using the knowledge gathered from my glimpse into the local time-stream, each kick, punch and gesture finds it's mark and marks a prefect kill.

In just moments, I'm stood amongst so much wreckage.

"Well Drakken? Satisfied?"

Using a few pieces of the Lotus, I snatch up a fallen pistol and carry it to my hand.

"Well, sorry Tara, but I got to know what's behind door number one!"

I press the pistol to my temple and pull the trigger.

Once again, the world goes white.


	67. Chapter 66

The disease spreads like a grey tide rolling over the British Isles. There's nothing that can stop it and I have no idea if we would want to. A lot of people got hysterical as their chips went into flux as they died but there were very few fatalities. Some people were buried under collapsing Diablos but for the most part, the underground had made ready for the changes.

Things aren't as nice as they used to be. All the technology had to be refitted to a sort of 1950's standard, which makes most hi-tech things impossible.

I watch as a new wave of Diablos lands on the coast of Dover and collapse into heaps of grey sand. I couldn't do that much damage that quickly myself and I think the casualties from implementing this on the whole world would be too extreme, but the tough people of the British Isles seems to have taken it in their stride.

Most of my chores here are nice, simple and honest things like making trees grow faster and gathering materials for building. Rebuilding the damage done by the panicking Diablos during the early stages of the greying is taking longer than we had hoped but this seems to have become Baxter's Magnum Opus.

* * *

"Well Baxter, we've done it, we've really done it."

"We have a haven for those who want to be free, yes," he smiles up at me from his chair. Despite Saint's ministrations, he's aged about twenty five years, mostly due to the destruction of the silicon parts of his skin.

"Are you dying of the Greying?" I ask, not bothering to try to be tactful.

"Not as far as we can tell. Then again, I'm not sure what effect Saint had on me. I seem to have a pulse these days."

"You think you're becoming human?"

"I may well be. Each time she heals me, I become a little more like a human it seems. What was it you came to see me for, Ronald?"

"Not that I'm not thankful for the break, but don't you think that I'd be more use if there were some actual combat to be had?"

"You'll have your time. Drakken will attempt to wipe us out with bombers. I'm going to have Paragons patrol the skies until we've repelled at least a half dozen attacks. Once that's don, I asume that we'll officially be more trouble than we're worth. Then you can go back to your noble quest to free people who don't want to be freed."

"At least now I know. Thank you, Baxter."

* * *

I step out into the grey, hollow sunshine of the middle of England. They seem to have only a few different shades of sky, most of which seem to be grey. Thinking of my stomach, I wander off towards the centre of the town and the market that sits in its core.

Baxter chose the village as the base of his cell because of the mountains, which interfere with the radio signals Drakken was using to control the Diablos. This meant that most of the people here were already used to being without their chips before the greying. That was a blessing in disguise.

Crossing into the square, I begin to exchange pleasantries with the people that I meet. It's nice to have folks notice you; chipped people are damned ignorant at times.

The drizzle that plagues this green and pleasant land begins to shake down lightly and I tilt my face into it, letting it cut through the sweat from my exertions this morning and then skip lightly into the shelter of an awning on the front of a small bakery.

"Ronald!" cuts a happy cry from behind the counter. Mr Glenn is the old baker and I've been sending a copy of myself to help him every morning. Artistry usually.

"Hello Mr Glenn. How much for one of your filled rolls?"

"For you, nothing! As if I'd charge you for anything. Though while you're here, could you have a look in the loft? There's a scratching noise up there and I'm afraid it's rats."

I smile at this before nodding the affirmative and heading up his stairs.

* * *

Pigeons.

I called in a handful of Mole Rats and had them clear it out.

Munching happily on my roll, I sit on the moist stones of the village fountain, looking around. Suddenly, a small redhead tornado materialises, trying deliver a flying kick to my head. Reflexively, my free hand snaps out and catches her in the air.

"Awww, one day I'll get you!" cries Lynn Possible, gleefully.

"One day, kiddo, you'll be as good as your sister, but I don't think you'll be able to get me."

"Tell me about Kim, Ron! I like the story where you saved her from fading away!"

"Why do you always ask for the one that makes me sad?" I ask her as I sit her on my knee and get ready to tell the little brown eyed dervish her story.

* * *

"So why didn't you use your powers to stop that horrible Mankey-monkey taking Kimmie's heart?" Lynn asks, confused at the end of the story, as I tell her the part where I wandered town for a long while because I felt a little like the ground had been kicked out from under me.

It seems that feeling was something of a harbinger because I had a few boring weeks before she got back into her original routine and Mankey was mostly forgotten.

"Because I didn't have my powers then, or at least couldn't control them. When I learned to, I promised that I would never use them to force my opinion on anyone, especially those I love. I've broken that vow and impinged on a few people's freedoms over the years but never seriously. I couldn't have done that to Kim if I wanted to," I finish sadly.

"Don't worry Ron, even if Kimmie didn't see it, we know you're the best!"

"Ain't that the truth," comes a sultry voice from behind Lynn and we both look up to find Monique stood there with one of her wicked smiles and a slightly bemused looking Mona in tow.

"Mon, Mon, how are you?" I ask, perking up a little now that the immediate need to open old wounds for the sake of the daughter who still doesn't know she's mine, or more accurately, doesn't know I'm _that_ Ronald Stoppable.

"Oh, we're doin' just fine, Stud, thanks for asking," Monique replies sitting down next to me as I toss Lynn gently from my lap to go play with Mona. They're slipping and sliding on the old, slick cobbles in moments. "How about you?"

"Oh, I'm ok, Monique. Just a little tired of having to tell Lynn the stories of when I saved Kim because they pretty much universally involve me saving her while she's doing something to try and impress Mankey…it's not as if my early history, the stuff she could possibly relate to has much in the way of individual heroism in it."

"I wouldn't say that, you successfully destroyed a lot of lairs, at least to hear Kim tell it."

"Not quite the same. Randomly pushing buttons or knocking things over by accident isn't really heroism in the eyes of a four year old."

"True I suppose, though you could always make stuff up. Things that happened in movies or something."

"I suppose but that seems like it would be a violation of I don't know how many of the vows I've taken over the years."

"Stuck between a rock and a hard place then?"

"Pretty much. One of my biggest problems is that I'm not entirely sure why I'm still here and whether I'll be able to tell Lynn that I'm her father. I mean, the celebrations and the freedom were great for a while, but now that winter's coming, I seem to spend all of my time messing with nature to make sure that people don't starve."

"Is that in some way a less noble pursuit than kicking robots, Babyboy?"

"You know, I never really thought about it that way."

"Maybe, and this is a crazy idea here, maybe this is someone's way of giving you time to get to know your children…even if you still can't bring yourself to tell them all."

"Where the hell did you get such wisdom?"

"Honestly? I wasn't exactly popular until we moved to Middleton. My summers were a festival of Dr Phil and Oprah."

"So that explains it. What lie did you used to tell Kim?"

"Oh hell Ron, she never knew about my acne or any of the other things. She thought I was like, channelling Mother Teresa's ghost or something."

That actually explains a lot.

* * *

"I don't know about this, Ron," Bonnie screams from behind me in the cockpit of my little jet. I honestly can't believe that I didn't think of this before; I always wanted to fly a starfighter!

"Look, Bon, it's safe as houses, the only way you'll have any problems is if I'm killed or incapacitated and then it won't explode or anything, it'll just dissolve into mist and you'll have been ejected. Safe as anything we've used before."

"Yeah, but what if you get distracted?"

"As long as you're not planning to reach past my seat and start playing with me, I think we can safely assume that that isn't a major problem."

"Funny," she replies, sulkiness in her voice.

I smile and execute a triple barrel roll, a loop and then reverse our course with a half loop twist. The thing flies like a dream, though effectively, I'm the one doing the flying I suppose. The vessel itself is fully space worthy and is based on a design that Wade stole from James Possible just after the exodus. It took me three whole days to memorise the plans for this thing and another six for Wade and I to modify the designs so that they would be immune to the silicon eating virus.

"Ron, hate to bother you with this…" Baxter's voice chimes in through the bulky valve driven radio at the back of the cockpit.

"What is it, Baxter?"

"There seems to be a small force of attack craft coming this way from a heading of 193 degrees. Would you mind awfully intercepting them for me?"

I just grin like an idiot.

"You got it, Baxter. Bonnie, hang on to your lugnuts. If you fancy using the aft particle cannon while you're back there, that would be useful too."

"Ron, what…?" she manages before the acceleration rams her back into the seat and drowns out her words with the noise.

I reach out with my mythic senses to ensure that there are no real humans in the crews of these beasts and plot myself a smooth little attack run. Cutting in through the left flank of the squadron, I take the first of them apart with a controlled burst from the particle stream cannons and then dodge nimbly out of the crossed fire fields of the nearest two bombers.

I cut out through a cloud bank and call on two of the local dragons to run interference; Fung Fu and Shang Fu. They begin to play amongst the clouds as high-winds and thermals, making the terrain all the more interesting for my poor victims.

The second bomber comes apart as I scythe its secondary stabilizers off with direct fire. Bonnie's still screaming in the back seat. I'm not entirely sure why, I'm not letting her feel the full force of the G's up here.

The four remaining vessels are in a tight formation so that they can overlap their fields of fire. A good tactic, really. Freeing my mind within the framework of the craft, I prepare the missiles and let them fly using my mind like a laser guidance system.

The pilot of the targeted aircraft receives no warning as the silent projectile closes with his jet and breaks apart into a cloud of atomically sharp knives. None of the bombs will ever touch the surface of England.

The three remaining bombers break in desperation and I loose another pair of missiles to hunt the one breaking south and then dismantle the others at leisure with the particle cannons.

I think that was an effective test of the concept here.

Just going to have to avoid bringing Bonnie along in future.

* * *

"Have you thought that the only way that you can bring peace and happiness to these people is to learn to find peace for yourself?" Immortal poses a question that I'm been trying to avoid for some time now.

"How exactly does one find peace, Master?"

"You've gone back to calling me Master. What's up Ron?"

"I'm going to have to leave England. I can't stand being with Lynn and Ryu without them knowing that I'm their father but I can't bring myself to tell them. I don't know what to do."

"I think you have your answer already and based on the way you keep having violent impulses, you're going to go into the world and work out those violent impulses on Drakken's minions until you find some closure. Then, you'll come back here and put yourself on the line because you can't bear not to."

"I think you're right, Master."

"For heaven's sake, Ron, stop calling me master. Go. I'll keep them here, safe and happy until you have the strength to reveal the truth to them."

"Thank you, Master."


	68. Chapter 67

"Sorry Helena, this is the end of the line. You have a choice; surrender or be viciously and lethally thwarted."

"You'll not successfully stop me, Stoppable, You don't even know what my agenda is!"

"I'm guessing that once he's beaten you to within an inch of your life and I've raped you until you bleed you'll be begging to tell us," Passion chips in, smiling like I suspect any person making such a promise would.

"I'm not even going to try to restrain him, Helena. You've told me that I have three children and I have every intention of protecting that knowledge from hurting them. You'll not even get a change to threaten them again and I'm more than happy to let him do things to you that I'll have nightmares about."

"You wouldn't dare," she spits back in my direction as she slowly drags an athame across her palm and squeezes a few drops into the centre of the ritual circle.

"Wouldn't I?" Passion asks happily. He's so angry that I'm not sure how to cope with his impulses washing against my mind so I resolve to take the most basic path I can and allow them to wash over me.

"I really think he would…"

"He's right you know."

"This is insane," Helena burst through after a few moments, "You're threatening me when it will mean nothing in a few moments! I just completed the ritual that will unleash a hunter that can slay each of your children, even the one that was never born. I'll erase your family from existence and you're welcome to finish my life. It was pretty much over when you slew Olivia."

I look at Passion for the briefest of moments before hammering out into the sky and following the ripple in the air that burst from the summoning circle. I have a horrible suspicion that I know what she just summoned…a cruel mockery of the wrath of God.

* * *

"It's just you and me now, Helen," I say happily, stepping forward and scuffing the lines of the circle out.

"You're too late, whichever one you are," she gloats, exposing her neck to me slightly. I smile, thinking of biting and licking that neck while she begs me to stop. I keep advancing.

"Helena, you really think that whether he stops that thing has any real bearing on what I'm going to do to you?" I ask, smiling like a monster and shaking my head, "No, no, no. What matters is that you were malevolent enough to threaten my children. Three children that you revealed to me to hurt me no less. I'm going to hurt you and there's nothing you can do to stop it."

"You wouldn't dare. Ron Stoppable is a hero!"

"I'm the part of him that has to be kept under wraps to keep that true," I reply, smiling.

About eight seconds pass before she starts screaming.

It's a good scream, full of music.

* * *

I hammer through the sky, pursuing what may be an angel as far as history could ever record. The damn thing is intent on killing all of my children and I'm sorry, that's just not going to happen.

I sense Helena Kult begin to scream. I can't tell if Passion intends for her to live or not but if he's going to kill her, I hope she dies while he's still with her, rather than from her wounds once I call him back. That would be an unpleasant fate, even for her.

The blur is beginning to gain ground so I reach into the essence of Sun Wukong and draw forth a packet of power so that I can start to bend time and slip between moments to try to catch up with the thing.

Drawing alongside at roughly the same speed, I realise that it's not a hollow blur of air but in fact a man shaped of glowing, turbulent mists and air currents. As I pull up, it turns to glance at me as if it expected something normal. Desperation has me drawing upon far more of the power than I would normally and I can feel the scratching that Sun makes at the sides of my mind when I'm going like this.

My knotted brow, fiery eyes and thickened lips shock the being and it begins to execute a sequence of tumbles and rolls to try and break my pursuit.

I give chase, following it move for move and holding my ground only twenty yards behind it.

Spilling consciousness left and right, I let the lotus grow from my flesh and form into a trio of potent darts that spin and dance about me like leaves on the wind.

I know where it's going now, I can taste it. Lynn and Anne. That is so not going to happen.

I break free of the chase and do something I swore I'd never do.

* * *

Lynn Possible dreams fretfully in her small bed beside her mother's.

Inside her dream, a man who looked just like her great-grandfather's friend from the pictures but with a beard and blue eyes was talking to her. She didn't like it.

"Lynn, I'm sorry, but you're going to have a very, very bad dream in a moment and I'm here to protect you."

"Who are you?" she demands, scared by the man she's never met talking to her having risen like a beast from the deep out of the gentle pool she was playing in with her magical friends.

"I'm a friend of your father's, your sister's and of Wade's. You've met Wade, right?"

"The sad black man?"

"Yes. I'm afraid that's partly my fault. Look, I'm going to tell you a secret that you've got to promise never to reveal that I told you. The secret is nothing, but you cannot _ever_ tell where you found this out. If you do, you could cause a lot of hurt. You understand?"

"Is it a good secret?" the four year old asks with rapped attention.

"The best. There is a man you will meet soon. His name is Ron Stoppable. He was deeply in love with your sister, the one who died and he loves your mother too. He looked after her when James, her husband left her when she was sad about Kim."

"You mean when she was crazy?"

"Yes Lynn, when she was crazy. Though there was some truth in what she saw, anyway, that's not important. This man, Ron Stoppable, is your father and he just found out. And in that moment, he loved you more than life itself. That's because Ron is a very special person with more love in him that he can keep in."

"I have a daddy?"

"Yes, but you'll be older before he says anything to you. He's scared."

"Scared?" Lynn asks, confused by her father being afraid of telling her.

"He'll worry that you won't accept him. Just remember, he's a good man and he loves you."

"Why is this a good secret? I've not met him."

"Well you will right about…now," the stranger finished as her dream dissolved and distorted as a blonde man with brown eyes and a face like a scary monkey burst through it like damp paper.

Lynn Possible sat up in her bed, terrified and screaming as reality around her tore itself asunder leaving a very angry looking, glowing Ron Stoppable stood at the foot of her bed.

* * *

I've just violated the dreams of my own daughter but I haven't the time to think of that. The thing will be here any second.

Gathering her up, I form my egg around us and ready the lotus.

It arrives and we clash.

A being made of colored mists and churning eddies shaped like a man but without the heart or soul against a mere human, gifted unwillingly with the powers of a wannabe god.

Reality bends and distorts as a theoretical burning sword of God batters against the Lotus and Lynn screams in fear as the air melts and distorts.

Then suddenly, the being is gone. It's all over and we're alone.

Passion must've forced her to break the ritual.

Or killed her.

I really don't care.


	69. Chapter 68

"Just get out, Ron, you coward!" Bonnie screams, her lungs tearing slightly under the weight of anger that she forces into those words. I feel so stupid.

I made the mistake of confiding in her that I was afraid of telling Lynn that I'm her father. I managed to tell Ryu-chan long ago but I still can't bring myself to tell Lynn. There's something clinging to me, as if telling her would in some way be admitting that Kim is forever dead.

I know this is rubbish, though it's a constant nagging worry all the same. It's been a long time since I asked the Narrator, the guide of the Dreamtime to try to find her for me but I've yet to find an answer as to what became of her soul. If she were reincarnated, he should be able to encounter her dreaming form from whatever realm she ended up in and if she were in a heaven or hell of some type, he should be able to find some hint of her given that these places are connected to the Dreamtime.

I've had no answer so Kim's fate is still unknown.

Telling Lynn wouldn't be like admitting that Kim is gone.

It's something much uglier than that.

I finally admitted it to myself.

Telling Lynn that I'm her father would mean admitting to her and to myself that I love her and that would be allowing her into my world of danger.

I suffer from a constant nagging strain that whenever I admit to anyone that I care for them, I end up failing them and getting them hurt.

It happened with Kim, albeit I never really told her exactly what she meant to me but in my clumsy, beating around the bush way I tried to let her know.

Bonnie suffered greatly at the hands of Helena Kult when I was unwise enough to mention the L word to her.

Tara spent months in limbo because of it.

Everything I love gets hurt to get to me so it's best not to love at all, right?

It was as I voiced this thought that Bonnie threw me bodily from our room.

Whoever said that honesty was the best policy in a relationship was very good at sleeping in a bathtub, methinks.

* * *

"Any mud going?" I ask, entering the mess hall to find Wade in his usual sleepless pose at one of the tables. He makes a vague half gesture with his head towards a low table at the far end where a grim pot of something black bubbles mercilessly like caffeinate lava awaiting a virgin sacrifice.

I grimace at the smell as I pour myself a cup. Actually, pour is a pretty poor choice of words here. Wait for a tectonic reaction would probably be more apt and as the heavy blackness begins its laboured but surprisingly casual battle with gravity, I turn to look at Wade.

In all the time he's been like this, I've never really found out why he doesn't sleep.

Well, in fairness, he does sleep, but he had me train him in a method of deactivating half of his brain so that he could avoid sleeping truly. In the night, he's in something like a cross between wakefulness and sleep or wakefulness and a coma.

He never dreams, I know this much and it worries me.

I take my mud and sit down next to him.

"Wade."

No response.

"Wade," I try a little more forcefully.

Almost as slowly as the coffee poured, he looks up to find me sitting there.

"What?" he growls in his heavy bass voice, an edge of anger or frustration there.

"I'd like to know what it is that's bothering you and why the hell you've avoided sleeping for the best part of four years."

"You want to know this now? I've been like this for four years, Ron! I think we're past you having a right to know as a concerned friend. You can't even order me to tell you anymore, now that you've handed the rebellion over to Damien."

"I've been curious before but I'd assumed that it was something that you'd have to work out for yourself. The more I interfere, the less freedom you have."

"So I've been free to slowly kill myself using your magics then?" he spits back at me as he gets up and starts to walk away. Something of Sun in me breaks free.

"Stop right there," I command and he complies, a mild look of fear in his eyes. "I'll make you a trade, Wade. You gather together whatever the hell is wrong with you and get ready to spill your crazy while I go and deal with my own impediments. I'll tell Lynn about her daddy. Satisfied?"

"No."

"But you're going to comply," I finish. It isn't a request.

He grunts an affirmative as I let go of the mild telekinesis that had been holding him off the ground and walk out into the cold, grid-metal corridor, barefoot once again.

* * *

Stepping through the cracks around the door doesn't seem like a betrayal of anyone for once. I don't really understand it but when I used to come see Anne in the night, I was always plagued by a little guilt but not tonight.

She's so beautiful there in the twilight, fine hairs resting across her untroubled face, cutting hatches across her eyelids. I smile slightly as I settle down onto the edge of the bed.

My weight causes her to roll towards me slightly and I feel her arms move as if to hug me.

Slowly, I stir the hairs from her face and run a nail along the side of her face and she purrs slightly at my touch.

Her eyes flutter open.

I put my finger gently to her lips and smile down at her, slightly backlit by my feelings of affection.

She makes a small noise of confusion.

"Yes, Bonnie threw me out, but that's not why I'm here," I smile, knowing what she'll understand from that, "I need to tell Lynn the truth. I know you've been waiting for two years for this but I'm finally strong enough."

She stares up at me with tears of joy pricking the corners of her eyes and smiles at me.

"Well, it's about time, Ronnie," she whispers sweetly and hugs my knee. "You want me to come with you?"

"No, I think this is something I have to do alone," I smile back and stroke her hair slightly before rising and moving through the partition into Lynn's room.

Lynn's a lighter sleeper than most of the young folks here. I've never let her sleep to deep since I became aware of her; it's not a healthy thing for a rebel to do.

"Wha? Who's there?" she demands into the darkness. I can feel her hand tightening around the handle of the micro-stunner under her pillow.

"It's me, Lynnette. It's Ron."

"What are you doing here, Ron?" she asks, relaxing slightly and turning the bedside light on after groping for the switch.

"I've got something important and slightly horrible I've got to tell you and I'm sorry I didn't say it sooner."

"What's wrong? Is mum sick?" she asks in mild panic.

"No, nothing like that," I reply calmly, sitting onto the edge of her bed and looking her in the eyes. "It's about your father, Lynn. I know who he is."

She looks terrified and shocked, though I can feel a mix of excitement and strange calm in place of the outwardly portrayed emotions.

"It's me Lynn, I'm your father."

She lunges forward and hugs me tightly. After a few moments, I hug back and we sit there for a while in each other's arms. Eventually she pull back a little and her big brown eyes meet mine and I'm shocked out of my mind by what she says next.

"It's about time, Daddy. I've been waiting for ages. Now I've got to tell you not to be angry at Wade. You had the same problem."

I look at her puzzled for a minute.

"I was told to tell you that a long time ago and I nearly forgot," she smiles, "but like you keep saying; anything is possible for a Possible."

"Yeah, but you're really a Stoppable," I reply, shaken to the core by her words.

* * *

I find Wade sat, looking as troubled as I might expect under the circumstances. He sits, hunched over the table, his great weight making the bench sag in the middle. His hands dance idly over a piece of circuitry as if he were sculpting clay, though I know that he's only doing this to avoid thinking too hard about anything.

"Alright, Wade, time to have it out. I want to know why you don't sleep anymore. I want to know why you're a sullen and unbalanced son of a bitch all the time and why you stopped being the leader of this damn rebellion. Don't you even bother trying to deny it; I used to be little more than a figurehead, but after we beat Du, you changed and I took up more and more of the slack until I was actually in charge around here."

He heaves a heavy sigh and brings his eyes up to meet mine.

"When you sent me into Destiny to get Tara out, something went wrong. I ended up in a place I wasn't meant to be and I ended up finding out something I wish I didn't know. I've been too scared to tell you what I know and I'm terrified that if I go to sleep, it'll catch up with me."

"What are you talking about?"

"When we breached the last containment on Destiny, some code got away from the central engine. It formed a ghost, which became sort of conscious. Conscious enough to dream.

"When I penetrated the simulation matrix, I ended up in a simulation that contained Destiny's dreams. I couldn't get out and I had to pick my way through the whole place with a friend of yours to escape."

"You know the Narrator?" I ask, dreading the answer.

"Yes."

That explains his enigmatic comments five years ago. Blind and stupid.

"What was it you found out, Wade?"

"Destiny doesn't dream like people. It's a being of numbers and variables, so its dreams aren't symbolic so much as experiments in self. They're huge and sprawl like poly dimensional webs. They get everywhere as well. We went places he'd never been before, which apparently is more or less everywhere. We found it there."

"What's it? What is it that's bothering you so much? Why are you afraid to sleep?"

"I found someone who knew me. You've been looking for her and despite your mastery of the Dreamtime, you could never find her. Well, I strayed far enough, using Destiny's effective link of self with every computer ever conceived."

"You don't mean?"

He nods, tears in his eyes.

"She's changed, Ron. I'm so sorry, I could face the truth myself, let alone tell you. I'm sorry; I'm so sorry. She's alive, Ron. Kim's alive and she's not the same anymore. I thought if I could avoid seeing it again, that if I didn't sleep, my fear wouldn't draw me back there and I'd be able to eventually realise that it wasn't real, but it hasn't worked. I'm so sorry."

I just stand there, my mind racing and at once completely stationary. Kim Possible, my first love, the love I failed to save, whom I watched plummet to her death, is alive.

"How? How is she alive?"

and he tells me a story that breaks my heart in two and reforges it from steel.

* * *

Author's Notes: This is the point where the story allows Ron Conners: What Rons May Come to begin. Anyone who's dying to know can PM me and I'll give you the 411 but it will all come out eventually anyway. 


	70. Chapter 69

"What's wrong, Dad?"

It takes me a few moments to realise that those words are heading in my direction. I don't react, I don't react, I look up.

Little Lynn is sat there next to me with one of those concerned half smiles that her line do so well. I can see wisdom beyond her years behind those brown eyes and its kind of spooky.

"I'm just thinking about something. Something I had to learn to accept has turned out to have been a lie. What's the matter, sweetheart?"

"I was just hoping you'd look through the photos with me and mum. You can point out the ones where you're in the background and tell us why you're panicking."

We've played this game before and it's usually something I enjoy. I don't know, maybe it'll cheer me up a bit.

"Ok, yeah, maybe it'll make me smile."

"Yay!" she squeals slightly, pulling her wrists together beneath her chin and bouncing slightly.

"Go on and get the book. I'll get some coffee and talk to Damien and I'll be right back."

"Okay dad!" she grins wickedly at me and darts off to find a photo album with the physical maximum of pictures of me in it.

* * *

One thing that has to be said is that I train a mean apprentice. The boy who would be king has been achieving things that Wade and I had massive difficulty with. Well, he was until very recently where his blistering advances began to stall, but everyone has their off times.

Holding my cup of coffee like a trophy, I step up next to the man himself, who's trying to make sense of a report.

"All quiet on the western front?" I ask lightly, before sipping a taste of my brew. I sigh contentedly and look into the coffee, marvelling at Damien's skill. Since he took over, he even found time to get hold of something that approximates to actual coffee.

"Well, yes and no and it's driving me mad trying to work out why."

"What d'you mean?"

"Well, you remember Barlow Leaping, right?"

"Second in command of that cell in northern Minnesota?"

"Yes. I know him as that, you know him as that but I can't find any record of him in our files, no-one here has ever heard of him and I can't ask the cell because even though I spoke to them yesterday, the rest of the universe seems to think that they were wiped out a month ago."

"What?"

"I know."

"Drakken can't manipulate time can he?"

"Not any more than we can, though since Jim defected, we've been falling behind. Wade thinks that we'll be able to enter the war within a few weeks. If we survive that long."

"I don't get it though, what would they gain by removing Barlow?"

"I have no idea, and that's what frightens me. What brought you up here, save curiosity about what I'm doing to safeguard your universe after I found out what you and Wade were hiding?"

"First, that was mostly Wade. Five years of Wade, fourteen hours of me. Secondly…ok, I got no secondly but my excuse to avoid the embarrassing photos with Lynn for a moment was coffee."

"Oh, she wants to play 'guess what Ron's panicking about'?"

"Yep."

"You best not keep her waiting before she adds to her pile of albums."

"Good point," I reply before making my exit.

* * *

"Hey Ron," Anne says as I step through the door. I look across at her and smile. She's been behaving oddly like we're married since I admitted that I'm Lynn's father. Sometimes, I feel like she's talking to James, who's stood behind me.

"Hey beautiful," I smile back.

"Dad look! I found a weird picture of Kim! I can't find you in the picture but Damien's in it."

"What?" Anne and I ask at the same time.

There's no that Damien could have met Kim; he was about nine when she died.

We sit down either side of Lynn and look at the old binder she has on her lap. There, plain as day in the old black and white photograph is Kim, sat on the shoulder of a large guy in a football uniform. Beside him is the leather skinned Damien in a linesman's uniform and they're surrounded by other people, including a striking black girl and a linebacker that's troublingly familiar.

"That's not Kim, honey, that's my mother," Anne says after a moment. "And that's not Damien, that's my father. This is the only picture we have of him. He was the prop for the Paxton Pittbulls. He went missing just before she found out that I was growing in her tummy."

"Shit," I say quietly, my head dropping into my hands.

"What is it Ron?"

"I've got to go and talk to Damien and Wade."

"What is it?" she asks more insistently.

I wave my hand over the picture as I get up to go.

She looks as the image shifts as if she were squinting then it suddenly came into focus. Now that she looks, her father is clearly Damien, the big guy supporting her mother is obviously Wade and the running back holding the black girl's shoulders has three freckles on each cheek, dark eyes and a messy crop of straw blonde hair.

She looks at the date on the picture. Three days before the Paxton race riots, five days before her father vanished, a week before the Paxton chemicals accident and a month before the place became known as Middleton.

She glances at the picture next to it, one that had held a Cadillac until I banished the magics. Sat there is a Dellorian with an odd collection of stuff on the engine block.

"Good God," she mutters as the implications of what she's seeing sinks in.

* * *

Author's Note: This one is the ending that carries us into Ron Conners: Remember the Mad Dogs. This one may take a while to get going properly because, a) it's complicated and b) hopefully, it's going to be musical. It's set in 1965 (yes, Anne was a young mum) but I'm willing to stretch times on the songs to 69. If anyone has any suggestions and contexts, feel free. If I use the idea, I'll let you dictate what I draw next or something… 


End file.
